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Love Poems, Letters, and Remedies of Ovid
Widely praised for his recent translations of Boethius and Ariosto, David R. Slavitt returns to Ovid, once again bringing to the contemporary ear the spirited, idiomatic, audacious charms of this master poet.
The love described here is the anguished, ruinous kind, for which Ovid was among the first to find expression. In the Amores, he testifies to the male experience, and in the companion Heroides--through a series of dramatic monologues addressed to absent lovers--he imagines how love goes for women. "You think she is ardent with you? So was she ardent with him," cries Oenone to Paris. Sappho, revisiting the forest where she lay with Phaon, sighs, "The place / without your presence is just another place. / You were what made it magic." The Remedia Amoris sees love as a sickness, and offers curative advice: "The beginning is your best chance to resist"; "Try to avoid onions, / imported or domestic. And arugula is bad. / Whatever may incline your body to Venus / keep away from." The voices of men and women produce a volley of extravagant laments over love's inconstancy and confusions, as though elegance and vigor of expression might compensate for heartache.
Though these love poems come to us across millennia, Slavitt's translations, introduced by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda, ensure that their sentiments have not faded with the passage of time. They delight us with their wit, even as we weep a little in recognition.
The love described here is the anguished, ruinous kind, for which Ovid was among the first to find expression. In the Amores, he testifies to the male experience, and in the companion Heroides--through a series of dramatic monologues addressed to absent lovers--he imagines how love goes for women. "You think she is ardent with you? So was she ardent with him," cries Oenone to Paris. Sappho, revisiting the forest where she lay with Phaon, sighs, "The place / without your presence is just another place. / You were what made it magic." The Remedia Amoris sees love as a sickness, and offers curative advice: "The beginning is your best chance to resist"; "Try to avoid onions, / imported or domestic. And arugula is bad. / Whatever may incline your body to Venus / keep away from." The voices of men and women produce a volley of extravagant laments over love's inconstancy and confusions, as though elegance and vigor of expression might compensate for heartache.
Though these love poems come to us across millennia, Slavitt's translations, introduced by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda, ensure that their sentiments have not faded with the passage of time. They delight us with their wit, even as we weep a little in recognition.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2011
About the author
Ovid
3,013 books2,148 followersPublius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horatius, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last nine or ten years of his life. Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a "poem and a mistake", but his reluctance to disclose specifics has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
Ovid is most famous for the Metamorphoses, a continuous mythological narrative in fifteen books written in dactylic hexameters. He is also known for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love") and Fasti. His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology today.
Ovid is most famous for the Metamorphoses, a continuous mythological narrative in fifteen books written in dactylic hexameters. He is also known for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love") and Fasti. His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology today.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 2, 2022
i can't believe something so old could make me laugh out loud-
April 7, 2026
“In a like manner shall you and I endure everywhere on earth for as long as men can read and our names will endure, joined together forever.”
Reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses transformed something within myself, it felt like I was cracked open and my inner world began to flow outwards. This is my second Ovid. This collection features Ovid’s love poems, letters, and other writings. I loved the landscape of language in these poems. Poetry has always been a complex genre for me, but I can easily say that poems in the language of gods and monsters has always resonated with me deeply, a natural evolution from my love for Greek and Roman myths. It’s interesting reading poems from a particular point in history, as echoes of human life and culture of that time period are revealed in writing. The focus on purity and the union of marriage shows how much higher in regard the people of this time viewed love and marriage as an institution. Modern poems that mention social media and niche modern memes really deflate me and takes me out of reading poetry as a medium, but poems like these, written far into the past and translated by modern translators, always seem to touch me deeply. The weight of knowing that people hundreds of years ago once read these exact poems haunts me; the idea that someone centuries ago went through the exact same experience as me, who found themselves between these pages, and we will never meet one another, linked but separated by time… it’s surreal. The writings on gender and the exploration of gender roles here made me realize simultaneously how far we’ve come and how little we’ve grown. I loved the portion of the book that featured letters, and the different kinds of love hiding between the lines. Love letters left by men and women centuries dead, and yet their words are so full of life, and tell their own stories. Hundreds of years before our birth, millions of lives lived and struggled as we do, and a billion stories exist that are all lost to time. I love reading older texts like this because it makes me feel connected to humans who have long since passed, and yet their presence is felt through their writings and their stories. I feel connected to them and anyone who has read their work, linked together through the art form and yet separated by time and space. Reading these words of love and longing makes me feel more human. We all ache and yearn for people, and we all experience many types of love throughout our lives, each one leaving its unique mark upon us.
“You may hesitate and drag your feet, but the less you wish to go, the greater the need for going. Don't wait for the fine weather but leave at once, and when you are on the road, do not look back at Rome where the danger is. Like the Parthian soldier, flee, and as he survives, perhaps to fight on another occasion, you too may manage to save yourself. There are some who may complain that the advice l am giving is cruel. I agree that it is. The remedy is drastic, but those who want to recover must be willing to bear a measure of pain. Sometimes when I have been ill, I have had to drink concoctions of bitter juices. To redeem the body, you must walk through the fire. Parched and thirsty, you may not allow yourself a drink. To be whole again in your mind, will you refuse some temporary discomfort? You reply that this part of you is of even greater value than your body.”
Reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses transformed something within myself, it felt like I was cracked open and my inner world began to flow outwards. This is my second Ovid. This collection features Ovid’s love poems, letters, and other writings. I loved the landscape of language in these poems. Poetry has always been a complex genre for me, but I can easily say that poems in the language of gods and monsters has always resonated with me deeply, a natural evolution from my love for Greek and Roman myths. It’s interesting reading poems from a particular point in history, as echoes of human life and culture of that time period are revealed in writing. The focus on purity and the union of marriage shows how much higher in regard the people of this time viewed love and marriage as an institution. Modern poems that mention social media and niche modern memes really deflate me and takes me out of reading poetry as a medium, but poems like these, written far into the past and translated by modern translators, always seem to touch me deeply. The weight of knowing that people hundreds of years ago once read these exact poems haunts me; the idea that someone centuries ago went through the exact same experience as me, who found themselves between these pages, and we will never meet one another, linked but separated by time… it’s surreal. The writings on gender and the exploration of gender roles here made me realize simultaneously how far we’ve come and how little we’ve grown. I loved the portion of the book that featured letters, and the different kinds of love hiding between the lines. Love letters left by men and women centuries dead, and yet their words are so full of life, and tell their own stories. Hundreds of years before our birth, millions of lives lived and struggled as we do, and a billion stories exist that are all lost to time. I love reading older texts like this because it makes me feel connected to humans who have long since passed, and yet their presence is felt through their writings and their stories. I feel connected to them and anyone who has read their work, linked together through the art form and yet separated by time and space. Reading these words of love and longing makes me feel more human. We all ache and yearn for people, and we all experience many types of love throughout our lives, each one leaving its unique mark upon us.
“You may hesitate and drag your feet, but the less you wish to go, the greater the need for going. Don't wait for the fine weather but leave at once, and when you are on the road, do not look back at Rome where the danger is. Like the Parthian soldier, flee, and as he survives, perhaps to fight on another occasion, you too may manage to save yourself. There are some who may complain that the advice l am giving is cruel. I agree that it is. The remedy is drastic, but those who want to recover must be willing to bear a measure of pain. Sometimes when I have been ill, I have had to drink concoctions of bitter juices. To redeem the body, you must walk through the fire. Parched and thirsty, you may not allow yourself a drink. To be whole again in your mind, will you refuse some temporary discomfort? You reply that this part of you is of even greater value than your body.”
February 16, 2018
David Slavitt is sometimes criticized for improvising too much and not being quite accurate in his translations. True, but in the case of Ovid he seems to be exactly on the right wave length. This is an amazing version, particularly of the Amores, with a tone, sophistication, delicacy, and delight that sound to me exactly like the original, even if it isn't strictly word-for-word accurate.
April 14, 2024
"Corrina, Corrina
Gal, you're on my mind
I'm a-sittin' down, thinkin' of you
I just can't keep from crying"
~Ovid, circa 30 BC
Gal, you're on my mind
I'm a-sittin' down, thinkin' of you
I just can't keep from crying"
~Ovid, circa 30 BC
January 10, 2026
Enjoyable and a good translation, but I cannot for the life of me understand why the Ars Amatoria aren't in here? Very disappointing
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews