Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics

When only tattered fragments of Sappho's poetry survived antiquity, Bliss Carman did not translate them — he dreamed them whole. Published in 1904, Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics takes a phrase, an image, a single surviving line and grows from it a complete poem in Sappho's voice: invocations to Aphrodite and Pan, songs of Atthis and Anactoria, of love, longing, and the passing of beauty. It remains one of the most beloved poetic responses to Sappho in English — lush, tender, melancholy. These are Carman's creations after Sappho, not her literal words; for the surviving fragments themselves, see the companion edition.