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paul_viaf's review
4.0
I can see her stalk her prey as innocent as the droplet on a leaf, or as the archer, silent behind a thicket of foliage, salivating with the essential hunger that plagues us all. I can hear her voice, vigorous as the spume of mist from waterfalls, watching her lovers bathe. Counting the ways the sun hits them & forms spectral resolutions of their untainted bodies. This is an ancient day. One I would be well at peace in. Reveling, absent of technological distractions. I feel akin to her capricious heart which leaps from lover to lover. From body to body, goddess to goddess. A whimsical breeze which cannot resist caroming against any curve it may encounter. Her word, as romantic & effortless as a starry night sat upon in silence with hands interwoven. There are many phrases in this text which go absent because of the passing of time & the deterioration of the material which they were recorded upon. I would like to fill her poetic voids with my voice so as to wed our spirits through verse alone. I am well aware that she was a lesbian. I find, in matters of these, gender can become erased whereas sex (male or female) can never be. I feel akin to her & yet seduced by her. There is a unity as well as a dichotomy shared with her. She can erase you & replace you with a creature fully entranced with serpentine scents of romance. The absence of her words is somehow filled with the mystery of her presence. A silhouette of her literary form. I coral her stray plea to the gods. Her knowledge of Greek history & mythology is quite apparent. It only adds, yet another lovely dimension to her work. A work which its esotericism burns bright in the flames of earth’s great rarities. I think this is a fine work of translation, though it is my only. Perhaps there are those of better quality but the author goes into great detail as to how he arrived at these particular translations. I plan to read other version, though I thoroughly enjoyed this introduction to her work.
musicdeepdive's review
4.25
Arresting, beautiful in its incompleteness, and the only reason I fail to give this 5 stars is because I want to compare this translation to others, see which one captures the feel of Sappho's writing the best. Her writing packs a punch, and Powell certainly does a good job of letting us absorb that blow.
arieltf's review
4.0
Every time I open this book I am knocked off my feet. Are her fragments powerfully simple or simply powerful?
mattshervheim's review
Don’t feel qualified to rate this, since I know very little of Sappho and translations of Sappho, but I know I liked this a lot and feel grateful I stumbled across this in a rare book bookstore.
fabzatron's review
5.0
Sappho's poetry is as lovely as ever. I particularly liked how the translator strung together the random bits of verse to make sense of them-- I found her works even more compelling this way than I have in the past.
foxwrapped's review against another edition
3.0
Despite Sappho being well... Sappho... I'm reading this mostly because of Catallus. I want to read this before I read him. He was such a big fan he called the woman he was in love with "Lesbia," ha. Anyway, her poems are actually gayer than I thought. She is, like, such a total lesbian.
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