The Pocket Sappho (Shambhala Pocket Library) by Willis Barnstone

The Pocket Sappho (Shambhala Pocket Library) Reviews

• 
  galpalkirk

  the heterosexual translation of fragment 102 was a crime committed against me personally
• 
  Dani Winkler

  From fragment 45:
  
  I shall
  As long as you want to
• 
  Macey

  the poetry was pretty cool actually, considering it's thousands of years old and literally disintegrated. poetry usually melts my brain by being too symbolic and metaphorical but this didn't so that helps. there's something quite artistic in how the actual physical copies of the poems have disintegrated so the whole poem reads just
  
  'Don't madden
  my mind'
  
  'I long and yearn for'
  
  'Suddenly
  Dawn in gold sandals'
  
  'To Eros-
  you burn us'
  
  'Nor
  desire
  but together
  desire
  a flower
  I was happy'
  
  It sort of makes it more interesting that we have to guess what she wrote after that.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Rine Bekkelund

  Det er sjeldent at Glossary er den mest spennende delen av en bok. Fantastisk forord, dikt og Glossary. Oversiktlig og lærerikt. Virkelig veldig spennende å lese om Sappho!!
• 
  Marie Kos

  A worthy investment even if learning about the translation choices gives me pause!
  
  I actually enjoyed the foreword.
• 
  Cass

  “for praying
  this word:
  i want”
  
  kill me
• 
  Kelly Macquire

  Someone, I tell you, in another time,
  Will remember us.
  
  This book is exactly what it says it is, the pocket Sappho. As someone who has never read Sappho before, I can’t think of a better way to start. I found the introduction well written and highly informative for someone coming into this anthology with minimal prior knowledge.
  
  The introduction, albeit fairly briefly, described some of the wrought history of Sappho and although I’m positive I can find longer and more detailed descriptions of our knowledge of Sappho, her works and the history of her poems, this was a great overview of the fundamentals of the history which placed the poems in their context.
  
  I am longing to read more.
• 
  hal

  pre review circa Sept 2021:
  i need to stop buying books LMAO
• 
  Rita Sofia

  we know que eu não sou grande fã de poesia mas só pode ser 5 estrelas para a mulher que deu nome às lésbicas. obrigada sappho
• 
  Rey

  Happy pride month
• 
  Rhonda

  catching up on my reading goal lets go!!!!
• 
  Lanell Gardiner

  "When she left me she wept profusely and told me, "Oh how we've suffered in all this. Psapfo, I swear I go unwillingly."
  
  "Don't madden my mind"
  
  "I cannot imagine in the future any girl who looks on the light of the sun who will have your skill and wisdom."
  
  "Someone, I tell you, in another time, will remember us."
  
  Sappho seems to have always been in love.
  I absolutely adore this woman. And it's fucking weird to me to think of scholars sitting down and meticulously combing over her poems for analysis when,,,,,you literally just read it and vibe and relate and feel?
  
  I loved all of the poems but some of my favorites were
  Time of Youth; Seizure; Eros; To A Friend Gone, Remember; Return, Gongyla; As Long As There Is Breath; Abuse; Madden; Light; Face; No Oblivion; and To Hermis Who Guides The Dead.
  
  My only complaint; it wasn't long enough. :|
• 
  Carter

  wish there were more poems and less foreword
• 
  Adam Carrico

  Come holy lyre, speak to me and become a voice!
• 
  Audrey G

  bury me with this thanks
• 
  NR

  3.5
  (rating is for the book itself, not for sappho's poetry)
  Yeah, cool! I'd read Sappho before (queers will do queer things) and I really enjoyed all the fragments I could get.. I even (spoiler for my lore) memorized a poem of hers and quoted it to my ex (in this book Barnstone calls it "To a friend gone, remember", I believed it was the fragments of Atthis). So I was interested to read the 50+ pages of explanation about Sappho's history and poetry that this book offered. Still, I found the discussion lacking in actual content; it was a lot of opinion from someone who isn't even a woman (I'm allowed to say this because I thought Willis was a girl's name, believed I was reading from a lesbian author, then was proved wrong) — of course, I liked the opinion, I was happy to see a historian (?) tell the facts (what I believe are facts, aka opinions, but that's fine).. but I don't know. Maybe I should've read the original translations of Sappho book from which these fragments came. I did go and look at the versions of Sappho I'd read earlier and noted that the translation varied quite a bit, which always interests and slightly annoys me. From this translated collection, though, I selected quite a few lines and poems that I liked...
  
  LINES
  pg3 "you ask me what i am suffering / and why i call you, / what i most want to happen / in my crazy heart."
  pg13 "eros, loosener of limbs, never comes near her"
  pg29 "in grear spirit / charioteers / moved like gods / holy all together / ... / godlike Hektor"
  pg34 "you the bride are a form of grace, / your eyes honey. / desire rains on your exquisite face."
  pg42 "and i would rather see her supple step / and motion of light on her face / than chariots of the Lydians or ranks / of foot soldiers in bronze."
  pg49 "[endure] i want / to hang on / she said"
  pg57 "the kypros-born once / blamed me / for praying / this word: / i want"
  pg60 "lucent dew pours out profusely / on blooming roses, / on frail starflowers and florid honey clover. / but wandering back and forth she remembers / gentle Atthis and for your pain / a heavy yearning consumes her"
  pg62 "i shall enter desire"
  pg109 "i swear i take no pleasure / in being on the earth / but a longing seizes me to die / and see the dewy / lotus banks of the Aheron"
  
  POEMS/FRAGMENTS
  - Dancers at a Kritan Altar (pg6)
  - Death of Adonis (pg10)
  - Cicada (pg18)
  - Dawn (pg20)
  - Hair Yellower than Torch Flame (pg23)
  - Wildflowers (pg25)
  - Remorse (pg26)
  - Song to the Groom (pg30)
  - Hermis at a Wedding (pg32)
  - A guard outside the bridal chamber, who keeps the bride's friends from rescuing her (pg35)
  - Seizure (pg39)
  - Alone (pg40)
  - To Eros | Absence | Goatherd (pg44)
  - Homecoming (pg46)
  - To a friend gone, remember (pg53)
  - Atthis (pg55)
  - Paralysis (pg63)
  - Behind a Laurel Tree (pg64)
  - As Long as there is breath (pg66)
  - Abuse (pg71)
  - Gorgo (pg72)
  - Where am I? (pg73)
  - Andromeda, what now? (pg74)
  - In my pain (pg76)
  - Doriha (pg81)
  - On going bareheaded (pg94)
  - Dawn with gold arms | Sleep | Black Sleep (pg99)
  - Age and the Bed (pg111)
  - Afroditi to Psapfo (pg112)
  - Death is Evil (pg117)
  - On Timas (pg121, Diehl)
  
  P.S., did Barnstone title these poems (in which case, why? and more importantly, how?) or did Sappho (really?)? Interesting technique...
• 
  Sunny Stier-Wood

  historiography is such a silly sick joke- they spent millennia creating convoluted theories on why Sappho wasn't gay when the reality was so simple.
  
  "someone, I tell you, in another time
  will remember us"
  
  and we did, we finally did!!!
• 
  rin

  why translate one of sappho's most well known poems (at least well known in lesbian circles) as heterosexual
• 
  Emily

  Beautiful
• 
  Kira

  Moon and women, No oblivion, I Shall, Eros og To eros har meg i et grip
• 
  lynn wilcox

  sappho’s “friends”…
  devastating that so much of her work was lost
• 
  Maddie

  very gay. I liked it
• 
  Alice Webb

  3.5/5
• 
  mal h

  loved this. really beautiful imagery and surprisingly applicable (in some ways) to modern life and interpersonal relationships. totally drafting up a tattoo idea for "Doves Playing Dead"
• 
  ola!

  i like the poet, i don't like the choices about keeping certain poems in and out of the collection
• 
  Alan Teder

  You say Sappho, I say Psapho
  Review of the Shambhala Pocket Library edition (2019) which is abridged* from
  The Complete Poems of Sappho (2009) which is abridged** from
  Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho (2006)
  

  Sappho suffered from book-burning religious authorities who left us largely scraps of torn papyrus found in waterless wastes of North Africa. Such maltreatment has especially modernized her into a minimalist poet of a few but important words, connected often more by elliptic conjecture than clear syntax. ... Every phrase seems to be an autonomous poem, including a fragment of two words describing Eros: optais amme: "you burn us." - from the Introduction by translator Willis Barnstone

  
  Review in Progress
  
  Trivia and Notes
  * The Pocket Sappho omits the "Testimonia and Encomia", "Sources, Notes, and Commentary" and "Index of Poems and Fragments by Number" from Barnstone's The Complete Poems of Sappho.
  ** Barnstone's The Complete Poems of Sappho omits the original Greek texts from Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho.
• 
  Jones

  I read this all the time, I love Sappho 🩷
• 
  Charlotte

  they made my girl STRAIGHT😭 the translator did u dirty Sappho