A Garland: The Poems and Fragments of Sappho

by Jim Powell

A Garland : The Poems and Fragments of Jim A Garland : The Poems and Fragments of Farrar, Straus and FIRST First Edition Thus, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. Octavo. Paperback. Book is very good. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.Seller 354279 Poetry We Buy Books! Collections - Libraries - Estates - Individual Titles. Message us if you have books to sell!

Genres: Poetry, Classics, LGBT, Nonfiction, Queer, Greece, Literature

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

This is the disambiguation profile for otherwise unseparated authors publishing as Jim Powell

See also:
James Powell
Jimmie Powell

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great segment on translating poetry. Powell's knowledgeable on classic and modern writers and coherent in his investigation of how to bring 2500 years of cultural gaps to the modern times. Gonna have to reread after Ton beau de Marot

[marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Beauty is beauty only while you gaze on it,
but one who’s good will soon be beautiful as well.”

[Ash · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[tiya! · Rating 5 out of 5]

somebody call millie bobby brown and the fruit patrol !! - 5/5 stars

[Anastasia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the idea of stringing the fragments into a "garland" and allowing brief bits to create contexts for each other. I also agree with Jim Powell that such arrangement "permits [the fragments] to convey more poetic sense than they can in isolation." I am not entirely sure about the overall effect, though (looking forward to reading Anne Carson's translation next, which utilizes a lot of white space around each fragment).

I do appreciate the note on translating Sappho in the "Afterwords." Because of the "embarrassing directness" of her sentences when translated into English, many translators feel the need to "tart her up." And this, according to Powell, is the reason "why most translations do not age well and why many begin to look patently preposterous after the passage of less than a generation" (41). If anything, Sappho's fragments are both challenging and generative, and will hopefully continue to inspire both poets and scholars to adopt different translation approaches in the future.

[Marjorie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a great pity that most of Sappho's works disappeared long ago, except for fragments of one or more lines. The editor of this edition/translation of her extant poetry skillfully arranges these fragments to form a somewhat coherent narrative - purely subjective, of course, by necessity but it works.
I hope the archaeologists who are working in Pompeii or Herculaneum may one day find another library of scrolls that survived the disastrous eruption that include the complete works of this talented poet; hopefully, the library of a much more erudite family than the one whose surviving library contained mostly poor quality Epicurean philosophical works.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

in theory this book is not a 5 star since it’s super fragmented but since it’s like that due to how long ago her poems where originally written and the original poetry itself has become fragmented due to time the sapphic queen herself gets 5/5(also did not realize how fruity her poems actually are)

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really beautiful poetry. It makes me sad that so little of her work has survived. Maybe if we are lucky, someday someone will unearth some more papyrus scrolls hidden away somewhere. Well, a girl can dream!

[Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Welcome, to the quiet room.

Where we're not quiet at all as we discuss the hilarities/absurtites of the books I push myself to read, lose a few brain cells along the way and probably insult quite a few authors!



Lets begin!

So, I'll be quick and to the point.

I was confused while reading this. Yes, I get they're fragments of her poems but there was so much confusion because of it.

It just didn't do much for me other than padding my book count for 2024.

A quick read, sprinkled with interesting poetry that has stood the test of time.

Maybe you'll enjoy it?

[Bel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really nice, artistic translation. Plus, it inspired me to learn ancient greek.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powell has arranged the fragments in such a way that they play off each other, and a sense of her poetic style emerges from the collection. I found Powell's approach quite compelling.

[Matt]

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.

[Lauri_jel14 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a bitch for sapphic yearning (excuse my pun)

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found Powell's Afterwords just about as interesting (if not more than) Sappho's verses. But the one that struck me the most was "I don’t expect to touch the sky with my two hands."

My blog post here: https://hannahreadingwidely.wordpress...

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sappho is a great poet, and I enjoyed this book a lot. As translated by Jim Powell, Sappho is a poet who speaks directly to modern sensibilities, which many other poets of the ancient world, however great their achievement, do not.[return][return]There is nothing a translator can do about the fact that so many of her poems are missing or incomplete, except make the best job of presenting what remains - and in both his translations and the notes that accompany them, Jim Powell does just this.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sappho is a great poet, and I enjoyed this book a lot. As translated by Jim Powell, Sappho is a poet who speaks directly to modern sensibilities, which many other poets of the ancient world, however great their achievement, do not.[return][return]There is nothing a translator can do about the fact that so many of her poems are missing or incomplete, except make the best job of presenting what remains - and in both his translations and the notes that accompany them, Jim Powell does just this.

[Alex Stephenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Earth with her many garlands is embroidered-- spring's messenger, the lovelyvoiced nightingale--
When the pigeons' spirits grow cold they let their wings droop at their sides."

I love this ancient poetry. It's beautiful.

[Joanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Sappho and will read any translation. The poems are, of course, wonderful, but the book is bogged down with translator afterwords and other nonsense. Read the poems and put it back on your shelf.

[Pam P · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want my own copy

[Ariel ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every time I open this book I am knocked off my feet. Are her fragments powerfully simple or simply powerful?

[H. Givens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprising power in just fragments of poetry.

[Lali 🪖💐 · Rating 5 out of 5]

read it on my 12th birthday and it made me gay thanks

also used it to rizz up my first ever girlfriend