Acts of Love: Ancient Greek Poetry from Aphrodite's Garden

There are, in English, few ways to talk about sex without using vulgarities, euphemism, or jargon, which presents a problem for translators of ancient love poetry. Enter poet and scholar Economou, who, according to the book's introduction, creates a new ""no-man's land"" between ancient Greek and contemporary American language and culture. In this world, a couplet by Archilochos, written in the seventh century B.C., translates as ""As a fig tree in rocky soil feeds many crows / so amenable Pasiphile puts out for strangers."" New world or not, these 38 poets, writing between the seventh century B.C. and the sixth century A.D. and including the ageless Sappho, a pre-Academy Plato and many others of whom only classicists will have heard, show how little the intensities and indecencies of desire have changed. When Economou's mix of Greek names, straight-up translation and slang works, the sounds, humor, and passion of the new versions make them seem effortless and inevitable, as in these lines by Meleagros: ""Self-deceiving / lovesick boy-love / bitter honey- / lipped burn victims, / pour cold water / ice-cold water / over my heart."" There are moments when cliche-always a danger with so many contemporary idioms-causes the world created in the poem to be sadly familiar. It's hard to know whether it's appropriate for Economou's language to reference everything from amateur porn (""I shot my white-hot wad"") to adolescent fervor (""I'm just burning up""), but his choices certainly conjure an interesting place, ""kinkier than parsley"" and ""tipped with madness,"" in which to imagine oneself.