The first appearance of this award-winning writer's work since the 1940s, this collection, which includes an introduction by John Ashbery, restores Joan Murray's striking poetry to its originally intended form. Though John Ashbery hailed Joan Murray as a key influence on his work, Murray’s sole collection, Poems, published after her death at the early age of twenty-four and selected by W. H. Auden for inclusion in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, has been almost entirely unavailable for the better part of half a century. Poems was put together by Grant Code, a close friend of Murray’s mother, and when Murray’s papers, long thought to be lost, reappeared in 2013, it became clear that Code had exercised a heavy editorial hand. This new collection, edited by Farnoosh Fathi from Murray’s original manuscripts, restores Murray’s raw lyricism and visionary lines, while also including a good deal of previously unpublished work, as well as a selection of her exuberant letters.

In this translation of the Greek poetess's work, Barnstone remains faithful to the words of the fragments, only very judiciously filling in a word or phrase in cases where the meaning is obvious.

"In this expanded edition of his distinguished Sappho: Poems and Fragments (2002), Stanley Lombardo offers over 100 fragments not included in the original edition, as well as the new poems discovered in 2004 and 2014. His translation of this latter material yields fresh insights into Sappho's representations of old age, two of her brothers, and her special relationship with Aphrodite. Pamela Gordon’s engaging, balanced, and informative Introduction has been revised to incorporate discussion of the new fragments, which subtly alter our previous understanding of the archaic poet’s corpus. Complete Poems and Fragments also offers a useful updated bibliography, as well as a section on 'Elegiac Sappho' that presents the reception of the Lesbian poet in later Greek and Latin elegiac poems. A wonderful find for any Greekless reader searching for a complete and up-to-date Sappho. —Patricia A. Rosenmeyer, Department of Classics, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Presents a Sappho by a poet and translator that treats the fragments as aesthetic wholes, complete in their fragmentariness, and which is also, as the translator puts it: 'ever mindful of performative qualities, quality of voice, changes of voice...'

Collects the poems and fragments of the ancient Greek poet's surviving work, displaying the wide variety of themes in her work, from amorous songs celebrating adolescent females to poems of invocation, desire, spite, celebration, and remembrance.

Discovered in an Egyptian papyrus in 1896, the lyrics of Bacchylides are one of the great treasures of Greek poetry. These exquisite choral odes celebrate victories in the Pythian, Isthmian, Nemean, and Olympic games and chronicle the classical gods and heroes, eloquently revealing to us the spirit and world of Golden Age Greece. The poems are brilliantly translated by Robert Fagles, recently hailed by Garry Wills in the New Yorker as "the best living translator of ancient Greek drama, lyric poetry, and epic into modern English." First published in 1961, the book now includes a new translator's note by Fagles. " Fagles] has produced a work which is at once a faithful translation of Bacchylides in the fullest sense and something which stands and lives in its own right as a work of art."--Sir Maurice Bowra, from the Foreword "Fagles has created . . . a musical and craftsmanly series of verses. As a translator, Fagles has the merits of . . . keeping the lilting rhythms of Bacchylides alive in one's ear . . . and unearthing metaphors behind faded Greek words, of splitting the strings of compound adjectives into pungent clauses which lose nothing in color but make coordinated English."--Emily Vermeule, American Journal of Philology "The beauty, richness, and classic quality of Mr. Fagles's unrhymed verse make this translation a creative work and a valuable contribution to English letters."--Rae Dalven, Poetry

Sappho’s thrilling lyric verse has been unremittingly popular for more than 2,600 years—certainly a record for poetry of any kind—and love for her art only increases as time goes on. Though her extant work consists only of a collection of fragments and a handful of complete poems, her mystique endures to be discovered anew by each generation, and to inspire new efforts at bringing the spirit of her Greek words faithfully into English. In the past, translators have taken two basic approaches to Sappho: either very literally translating only the words in the fragments, or taking the liberty of reconstructing the missing parts. Willis Barnstone has taken a middle course, in which he remains faithful to the words of the fragments, only very judiciously filling in a word or phrase in cases where the meaning is obvious. This edition includes extensive notes and a special section of "Testimonia": appreciations of Sappho in the words of ancient writers from Plato to Plutarch. Also included are a glossary of all the figures mentioned in the poems, and suggestions for further reading.