Born in Lewiston, Maine, Willis Barnstone was educated at Bowdoin,
Columbia, the Sorbonne, and Yale. He taught in Greece at the end of
the Civil War (1949-51), and in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War.
During the Cultural Revolution he went to China where he was later
a Fulbright Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University
(1984-85). Former O'Connor Professor of Greek at Colgate
University, he is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature
and Spanish at Indiana University.
A Guggenheim Fellow, his awards include a National Endowment for
the Arts award, a National Endowment for the Humanities award and
four Pulitzer Prize nominations for poetry. His work-which includes
Modern European Poetry-(Bantam, 1967), The Other Bible
(HarperCollins, 1984) and Poetics of Translation- History, Theory,
Practice (Yale, 1993)-has appeared in, Harper's, New York Review of
Books, Paris Review Poetry, the New Yorker, and the Times Literary
Supplement.
"Mysterious, mellifluous Sappho shines anew in this glorious
translation, and Barnstone’s masterful introduction locates her
historically, unveils her impassioned life, and reflects on the
sensuous grace of her poverty, revealing the woman as she’s never
been seen before."
—Diane Ackerman, author of A Natural History of the Senses
"I have Sappho with me all the time now, as this collection is
absolutely stunning in every respect, and I'm filled with gratitude
to you for having borne it into the world. May your Sappho be
blessed. It is a tremendous gift to all of us."
—Carolyn Forché, author of The Country Between Us and The Blue
Hour
"A feast for those who, like me, are hungry to know more about the
great poet Sappho. The translations of the poems and fragments read
elegantly and the introduction and supporting material are lavishly
informative and interesting."
—David Ferry, translator of Gilgamesh and The Georgics of
Virgil
"What a joy to have Willis Barnstone’s Sweetbitter Love. This is
not only a vivid, sensuously elegant translation of every scrap of
Sappho we have; the wonderful introduction is designed to increase
our ardor as well as our knowledge, and the appendix containing
everything the ancients said of her as well as poetic tributes up
through Baudelaire’s is itself a treasure."
—Alicia Ostriker, author of No Heaven and Stealing the Language
"As a student I treasured the original Barnstone Sappho, and it is
a joy to have this new version made current with the latest
scholarship and enriched by four decades of further reflection.
Sappho’s famous voice is clear and powerful, even in the shards
that remain to us, and Barnstone embraces and captures this
phenomenon like no one else. This is a Sappho rendered with wisdom
and heart for newcomers and connoisseurs alike."
—Jeffrey Henderson, Editor, Loeb Classical Library
"What amazes me is how Sappho’s lyrics, composed in the seventh
century B.C.E., transcend their time and place to enchant us now.
In lines that are at once passionate and precise, seemingly artless
and yet magical, she writes of the cycles of life and death, and of
erotic desire as a sacred calling. She looks into the burning
center of things, and expresses pure wonder in the evening star,
the moon, birdsong. Willis Barnstone’s masterful translations
capture her excited praise for the things of this world, making one
of her prophetic observations shine with lasting truth: ‘Someone, I
tell you, in another time, / will remember us.’"
—Grace Schulman, author of Days of Wonder and The Paintings of Our
Lives
"If there is any final justice, which there probably isn't, the
world of letters would erect a monument of Willis Barnstone and
strew it with fresh wildflowers every day. I think of this Sappho
collection as the finest among Barnstone’s prodigious
achievements."
—Jim Harrison, author of True North and Legends of the Fall
"Sappho knew that we never tire of learning: passion makes the
moment eternal. Willis Barnstone has plumbed profound layers of the
ancient Greek to bring us Sappho. On his way to her, he renewed the
Gnostic Gospels and the Gospels proper. Now he has sounded the
deepest lyric rock of our founding and given us new sound."
—Andrei Codrescu, NPR commentator and author of It Was Today: New
Poems
"Willis Barnstone has brought a life dedicated to translation and a
lifetime of immersion in the Greek language to give us these new
and inspired translations of Sappho. With its brilliant
introduction and dazzling notes, this is the book of Sappho you
will want on your bedside table."
—David St. John, author of The Red Leaves of Night
"Eros has been riding Barnstone’s back for years, whipping him
across Spanish, French, Greek, Chinese poetry, across the poetry
and prose of the biblical lands to translate from those literatures
poetry, to make them new and his. Now he has embraced Sappho, with
whom he has been in love for years. What he has made ‘his’ is a
gift to us. Barnstone—lover, poet, and scholar—cannot make Sappho’s
fragments whole, but he makes us more aware of our loss than any
other translation. He gives us the abyss, and fragments of Sappho
in startling English—a few words that in ancient Greek changed its
music and made the walls of the city tremble."
—Stanley Moss, author of Asleep in the Garden
"Although she lived on the Greek island of Lesbos in the seventh
century B.C.E., the universal feelings that Sappho expressed still
connect us, human to human, across the ages. It seems improbable
that a new version of ancient writings could shed new light, but
Barnstone’s translation of Sappho does just that."
—Booklist
"In the last few decades, there have been many translations of
Sappho’s work by gifted and well-meaning writers. None quite fills
out these solitary, orphaned lines with the same rhythm and
feeling. Barnstone is one of the greatest translators of literary
expression from a foreign language into English. We are lucky to
have him."
—New Letters
Ask a Question About this Product More... |