Wind-Mountain-Oak: The Poems of Sappho

by Dan Beachy Quick

Dan Beachy-Quick writes, “There are depths within the denotative life of Greek words that English seldom allows readers in translation to access. At some basic level, I wanted to offer a translation that traced out some of those complexities into an apprehendable substance in the poems themselves—sometimes by allowing an image to unfold more fully than is the norm, at other times by giving some sense of a word’s complicated life, the compound nature of the Greek language, or by translating the same line in multiple ways. The hope, far-fetched as it might be, is to give a reader in English some semblance of how an ancient Greek listener might hear these songs. I’ve also veered away from the various traditions of ordering the poems. I’ve clustered them into groups that seem to loosely trace the entirety of life, from childhood to older age, from the birth of desire to the fear of no longer being desirable. In a quiet way, I mean the book to read as a kind novel, a bildungsroman , so that a larger sense of the life—the poem of the life—becomes palpable.”

Genres: Poetry

242 pages, Paperback

Published March 8, 2023

Reviews

[Cody Lakin · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good, it may have ruined any other Sappho translation for me.
First, there’s the order of the poems. Rather than placed in order, they’re arranged with a sort of thematic emotional logic, into sections that relate to each other so that the fragments seem to be in direct conversation with each other. Each section reads almost like one longer albeit fragmented poem, united even if vaguely by theme and emotion.
Second, there’s just the way they’re translated. My personal favorite is simply:

“Someone keeps us in mind
I say
in time yet to come.”

I’ve read three or four different translations of Sappho by now, but this one—even just using that one fragment as an example—just speaks so perfectly and directly to me. This might be a matter of differing taste for different readers, so I’ll just say: for me, this is THE translation. My favorite that I’ve read. It evoked the strongest responses from me consistently, across the entire book. Such precision with the language, and such sensitivity.

I’m going to be revisiting this collection a lot, in time to come.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

We constantly hear about Sappho. As much of her poetry as I knew I admired, and yet, possibly due to the fragmentary condition in which it comes down to us, it had never occurred to me to take time to get to know all of it. Then, when I was reading Franny and Zooey, I learned that the title of another of the novellas by Salinger is a quotation from Sappho. This provided the incentive I needed. I got this recent translation from the library and quickly went through it — that’s how little of her fine work is left to us!
If you have a curious feeling that there is something missing from your first-hand knowledge of world literature and yet you can’t quite identify what it is, this may be the thing. In that case, don’t wait. Get this translation or, if need were, some other, and get to know this great poet.

[Anastacia · Rating 3 out of 5]

“For as long as you want”