The Poems of Sappho

By Sappho and John O'Hara

Praised for their simplicity and sincerity, the poems of Sappho evoke powerful and memorable images through her focus on emotion and individualism that foreshadows modern poetry. This collection, translated by John Myers O’Hara, includes over 75 poems such as “Ode to Aphrodite,” “The Roses,” “Eros,” and “The Swallow.”

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780735253926

Sappho

Mary Barnard (1909–2001) was a prominent American poet, translator, and biographer with many books in her repertoire. She studied Greek at Reed College and began to translate at Ezra Pound's suggestion in the 1930s. Her Assault on Mount Helicon: A Literary Memoir was published by the University of California Press in 1984. Two years later she received the Western States Book Award for her book-length poem, Time and the White Tigress. She also published prose fiction and a volume of essays on mythology as well as the original lyrics gathered in Collected Poems.  

Reviews for The Poems of Sappho

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sappho is the great lyric poet of antiquity. Plato called her the "tenth muse." Her poems were preserved until nearly A.D 1000, at least according to A Book of Woman Poets, "when a wrathful church destroyed whatever it could find. In 1073 her writings were publicly burned in Rome and Constantinople by order of Pope Gregory VIII." Almost all of Sappho's poems survive only in fragments found in pot shards, scraps of papyrus used to wrap mummies and quotations by grammarians and others, ruins of once magnificent structures. Sadly, unless we get a major find on the order of the Dead Sea Scrolls, these 100 fragments are all we have. Not knowing Greek, I can't really judge Mary Barnard's translation, but despite the fragmentary nature of what survived Sappho comes through as a personalities and amazing poet: : vernal, refined--but at times frank in speaking of desire. The Footnotes starting on page 95 are illuminating.

[benuathanasia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful in its simplicity. It didn't really inspire much reflection in me, but it was still soothing and pleasant.

[a211423 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The best translation of Sappho I have ever read. Ms. Barnard has maticulously translated the fragments without embellishments or popular nuances which some other translations seem compelled to do.

[alanteder · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Still "New" after 60+ YearsReview of the 2019 UC Press reprint edition of the 1958 original Mary Barnard translation