Reviews - If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

1.71k reviews for:

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

i want to say something but aidos prevents me. yet if you had a desire for good or beautiful things and your tongue were not concocting some evil to say, shame would not hold down your eyes, but rather you would speak about what is just.

rainyreadsdays's review against another edition

1.0

I did not enjoy this translation. It was sloppy and barley legible. The majority of the poems in this book were not finished and I will be trying to read a better translated copy of this book in the future. I knew this was called "fragments of Sappho", but I didn't know this would be "barley legible poetry snippets from Sappho". I liked a few of the fully legible poems and I do think Sappho was talented, I just think this book did not do justice to her work.

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ascoeur's review against another edition

5.0

Absolutely devastating that this is all that remains of Sappho's works

thevultureeye's review against another edition

4.0

emotional reflective relaxing fast-paced

nariaein's review against another edition

4.0

some of my favorite lines:

"Eros shook my mind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees"

"you came and I was crazy for you
and you cooled my mind that burned with longing"

"I would rather see her lovely step and the motion of light on her face than chariots of Lydians or ranks of footsoldiers in arms."

"but me you have forgotten
or you love some man more than me"

"Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me—
sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in"

baeofnipels's review against another edition

5.0

mysterious reflective relaxing fast-paced

this changed my life when i read it in college. finally found a used copy at a bookstore and here i am (now again) changed.

a feat of translation, research, insight.

sappho remains a brilliant, shining mystery. that we may glimpse her lyrics and resonate with the barest of fragments proves her enduring genius.

thank you anne carson and sappho. thank you

anuksha's review against another edition

5.0

love is what it means to be human!!! to yearn and to want and to love is so so so human!!! what a poetic translation. sappho gets it.

qmcury's review against another edition

5.0

Anne Carson's translation does something in my brain that I can't explain but whenever I read it, it completely shuts my literature student perspective off and I suddenly become as excited as a crow that saw a tiny, shiny, colorful gem