Sappho, a Garland: The Poems and Fragments of Sappho

Powell ( It Was Fever That Made the World ) has translated all 500-odd verses by the Greek poet Sappho ``that make consecutive sense, however brief, torn, or abruptly interrupted.'' Most of Sappho's writing was lost during later antiquity, but modern archeological discoveries have added much to the body of her work. In his concise and penetrating afterword, Powell states that Sappho's society was one ``which allowed her talent scope to develop, a culture which was, to judge by the evidence of her poems, markedly less misogynous and gynophobic than that of many Greek cities.'' Later centuries, however, have found her homoeroticism threatening. Eros is the dominant figure and theme of her poetry, not the glory of the Greek city state: ``Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers, / others call a fleet the most beautiful of / sights the dark earth offers, but I say it's what- / ever you love best.'' Some of the fragments are tantalizing bits of erotic observation, others shards of stories never to be completed. And some sequences are baffling, while others suggest a weird if not fully intended meaning. Powell faithfully reproduces the complex forms of Sappho's poetry, with its ``artfully precise attention to sequences of disclosure.'' (Dec.)