A review by hoatzin
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Sappho

The brackets and inclusion of original (surviving) Greek text definitely give this edition a weight that the first edition I read (Lombardo 2002) did. Looking at the Greek, you can see how many empty spaces and half-words remain, and so how much was truly lost. It also stops - well, slows- me from patching the fragments together into a new poem like a blackout poem. For example, if not for the brackets, I would read the lines in 71 "Some sweet song in honey voice, piercing breezes wet with dew" as a full phrase, when it is instead at least 4 incomplete phrases, ie "?]some sweet song, ?]in honey voice, ?]piercing breezes, ?]wet with dew". The pages at the end of the book with 8 poems a page that are only 1 word also drive home how little has survived.

Favorites: the full surviving one, of course, but also: 41, 58, 95, 104, 120, 130, 138, 147 of course, 168B