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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Carol Ann Duffy, Alan Cumming, Edwin Morgan, Gavin Maxwell, Jackie Kay, Ali Smith, Val Mcdermid, John Henry Mackay, Ricardo Pinto, Hal Duncan, Ellen Galford. Excerpt:Alan Cumming Alan Cumming , OBE (born 27 January 1965) is a Scottish stage, television and film actor , writer , director, producer and author . His roles have included the Emcee in Cabaret, Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye , Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler in X2: X-Men United , and Fegan Floop in the Spy Kids trilogy. He has also appeared in independent films like The Anniversary Party , which he co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in; and Ali Selim's Sweet Land , for which he won an Independent Spirit award as producer. His London stage appearances include Hamlet , Madman in Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist , for which he received an Olivier award, the lead in Martin Sherman's Bent , and as Dionysus in The National Theatre of Scotland's The Bacchae . On Broadway he has appeared as Mac the Knife in The Threepenny Opera , the Emcee in Cabaret , for which he won the Tony in 1998, and "Design for Living". Cumming also introduces "Masterpiece Mystery" for PBS. He has also written a novel, Tommy's Tale , had a cable talk show ("Eavesdropping with Alan Cumming") and produced a line of perfumed products labeled "Cumming". He has contributed opinion pieces to many publications and performed a cabaret show I Bought A Blue Car Today . Retaining his British citizenship , Cumming also became a U.S. citizen in November 2008. Early life Cumming was born in Aberfeldy , in Perthshire , Scotland, the son of Mary, an insurance company secretary, and Alex Cumming, a forester. He has one older brother, Tom. Brought up in Angus , Cumming attended Monikie Primary School and Carnoustie High School and originally aspired to a career in... ... Read more

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Chapters: Clive Barker, Tung Chee Hwa, Carol Ann Duffy, Steve Coppell, Eric Moonman, Anna Maxwell Martin, Maurice Henry Pappworth, Jane Kennedy, Barrie-Jon Mather, Stella Rimington, Rodney Robert Porter, Steve Voake, Tony Mcnulty, Richard John Russell, James Stirling, Albert Crewe, Ramsay Muir, Alan Arnold Griffith, Paul James, Patricia Routledge, David Andrew Phoenix, Har Gobind Khorana, Brian Hall, J. Gwyn Griffiths, Tony Cunningham, John Alexander Sinton, Oliver W F Lodge, Chris Lowe, Stephen Bayley, Percy Johnson-Marshall, Syed Kamall, Frank Kermode, Sanjay Jha, Phil Clarke, Monika Hellwig, Kerry Mccarthy, Trevor Kletz, Alan Hurst, Robert Legget, Roger Stephenson, George Groves, Diana Walford, John Holt, Doug Naylor, David Forrest, Alun Parry, William Edwards, Shahidul Alam, Margaret Simey, Edward Hubbard, Cyril Bibby, Christopher Wood, David Weatherall, Jim Woodcock, Oliver Weerasinghe, Dai Chuanzeng, Richard Burkewood Welbourn, Chris Ruane, Rob Mccaffrey, Edmund Marshall, Gordon Oakes, Margaret Murphy, Chris Moyes, Donald Nicholls, Baron Nicholls of Birkenhead, Scholefield Allen, Verna Wright, Phil Redmond, Michael Lund, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, John Shirley-Quirk, Paula Byrne, Gareth Clayton, John Blackburn, Phil Ineson, Rob Williams, Roger Bolton, Winifred Robinson, Urien Wiliam, Frances Crook, Maeve Sherlock, Harry Fang, Andrew Crawford, Sebastian Doniach, James Lumsden Barkway, Samantha Simmonds, Henry Wylie Moore, Emma Hayes, Jeffrey Thomas, Fergus I. M. Craik, Petrina Haingura, Ian Ritchie, Hugh Jones, Brandon Donald Jackson, Ronald Bordessa, Pat Arrowsmith, Alexandra Potter, Andrew Norton, Lionel G. Harrison, Malcolm Shaw, Sarah A. Radcliffe, Michael Thompson, Margaret Wall, Baroness Wall of New Barnet. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 357. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Ex...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=1498178 ... Read more

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For the first time in Penguin Classics-the incomparable verse of the ancient Greek lyric poet Sappho, in a brilliant new translation

Sapho's writings are said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria, but only one poem survives complete. This new translation of all of Sappho's extant poetry showcases the wide variety of themes in her work, from amorous songs celebrating adolescent females to poems of invocation, desire, spite, celebration, resignation, and remembrance. Aaron Poochigian captures the eros and mystery of Sappho's verse, bringing to readers of English the living voice of the poet Plato called "the tenth Muse," whose lyric power remains undiminished after 2,500 years. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A wonderful translation!
As Carol Ann Duffy, Britain's poet laureate says, "In these wonderful new translations by Aaron Poochigian we hear the voice of a great and enduring poet. Sappho." I couldn't agree more.

I have reread Poochigian's translation several times and I find them more and more beautiful each time through. I was surprised and delighted by the rhythms and his choice of words. Many of the poems struck me as sensual and moving. Sappho must have had an extraordinarily beautiful mind, but I never appreciated her poems in translation before now. If you don't read Ancient Greek, but you want to know what all the fuss is about, this is a very good translation to choose.

Preface:

Carol Ann Duffy has a lot of insight into Sappho. It is worth buying the book just to read what she says.

The Introduction:

Probably the weakest part of the whole book, but still filled with useful information and a good list of suggested reading. I would find this book very helpful if I had to write an essay on Sappho.

The Notes:

I learned more about Sappho from Poochigian's notes than I did in the class I took on Greek Lyric Poetry. I don't usually read notes, but these held my attention.

The Translation:

Poochigian's translation is accurate enough that you get a real sense of what the Greek says. I have read four of her poems in the original Greek; this translation captured both the sense and the beauty of the original.

Poochigian is a wonderful poet. He made good choices metrically in this translation. Normally, I am not a fan of translations into verse, but this one has a beauty all its own. I will probably read it out loud many times in the years to come because I love the way the words sound.

Although I don't agree with every choice of words he made, Poochigian has produced one of the most readable and skillful translations I have ever read. It is a work of art in itself and there is far more to admire than to forgive in this translation.

In another review I read for this book someone complained that this translation does not provide the original Greek on the facing page, but I did not find this to be a problem since it is very easy to look up the original Greek free on-line if you are interested in comparing it to the translation. I dare say that anyone who could do a meaningful comparison already owns Sappho in Greek.

Another review I read said that Poochigian uses absurdly long and obscure words. To be fair, however, I think that that reviewer should have mentioned that Poochigian always defines the obscure or difficult vocabulary he uses. Certainly, I did not have to look anything up.

This translation also gave me a sense of why Sappho has been loved and respected by many prominent figures- including Plato- since ancient times. Some of the translations were so beautiful I was moved to tears and wanted to read them over and over again. I have never experienced this with any other translation of Sappho.

As Carol Ann Duffy says at the end of her preface, "Aaron Poochigian's translations retain Sappho's intense sense of being singingly alive and of being on the side of youth, and loveliness, and love." I am glad I got the chance to read them.

Review by Julie Stoner
Book Review--Julie Stoner (in "Ablemuse", Winter 2009)

What, no Sapphic stanzas?The foxy Sappho didn't always use them herself--no one-trick hedgehog, she--but where are the famous stanzas named in her honor? Aaron P.'s translation does not attempt them. No, instead he reaches for something bolder:
namely, Sappho's other renowned inventions--pçctis and plectrum.

Music is the essence of Sappho's magic, argues Aaron P., but her quantitative (length-based) meter changes when English gives it stress-based percussion. Witness this review, with its weakened line-ends. English must demote to a long-short combo
what, in Sappho's Greek, would be mainly long-long, bold and emphatic:

- u - x - u u - u - -
- u - x - u u - u - -
- u - x - u u - u - -
- u u - u

Aaron further grieves that, while ancient cultures instantly inferred from the Sapphic stanza this is something songlike, our own thinks this is prosy and awkward. Still, free-verse translations are not the answer: shunning formal elements Sappho valued, these "betray her poems by their very nature."(Thus he condemns them.)

What to do, then?Aaron invokes the song-forms English-speakers know from their own tradition. This is something songlike, indeed. Prepare for aural enchantment:

Abanthis, please pick up your lyre,
Praise Gongyla. Your need to sing
Flutters about you in the air--
You gorgeous thing.
--"Abanthis, please pick up your lyre," stanza 1

Iambs, standing in for the Sapphic template, dance through three tetrameter lines, one half-line. Rhyme preserves the emphasis Sappho gave her lyrical line-ends:

Because my tongue is shattered.Gauzy
Flame runs radiating under
My skin: all that I see is hazy,
My ears all thunder.

Sweat comes quickly, and a shiver
Vibrates my frame.I am more sallow
Than grass, and suffer such a fever
As death should follow.
--"That fellow strikes me as god's double," stanzas 3 and 4

On the whole, I find his approach successful, though his frequent metrical substitutions paired with off-rhymes (stomach/come back, and even dalliance/battalions) sometimes raise my eyebrows. The choice of diction feels contemporary, with few exceptions. (Who, this day and age, says bedizened?Must we dance with the Webster's?)

Subtly bedizened Aphrodite,
Deathless daughter of Zeus, Wile-weaver,
I beg you, Empress, do not smite me
With anguish and fever

[intervening text omitted by reviewer]

Come to me now. Drive off this brutal
Distress. Accomplish what my pride
Demands. Come, please, and in this battle
Stand at my side.
--"Subtly bedizened Aphrodite," stanzas 1 and 7


Wonder how these excerpts have fared with others? Here's the way Anne Carson presents them ('02, Knopf) in If Not, Winter, although I'll skip the Greek she puts facing:

]I bid you sing
of Gongyla, Abanthis, taking up
your lyre as (now again) longing
floats around you,

you beauty
--Sappho Fragment 22, first complete stanza plus two words
***

no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
fills ears

and cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass
I am and dead--or almost
I seem to me.
--Sappho Fragment 31, stanzas 3 and 4
***

Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind,
child of Zeus, who twists lures, I beg you
do not break with hard pains,
O lady, my heart
[intervening text omitted by reviewer]

Come to me now: loose me from hard
care and all my heart longs
to accomplish, accomplish. You
be my ally.
--Sappho Fragment 1, stanzas 1 and 7

Anne's concern for simply transmitting extant text is why her lines have opposing Greek, and why so many pages contain such random fragments as these three:

]
]right here
]
](now again)
]
]for
]
--Sappho Fragment 83 (entire)

makeup bag
--Sappho Fragment 179 (entire)

celery
--Sappho Fragment 191 (entire)

Aaron's goal, instead, is to give the reader pleasure.String too small to be saved is absent. Further, he's reorganized songs by topic, not just by number. Notes (which are detailed, and at times, amusing) face each fragment, rather than lurk as endnotes. Though without the numbers, it's hard to find old favorite pieces,

Aaron P.'s achievement in this translation stands. The graceful music of Sappho's pçctis, plucked by rhyme as if by a skillful plectrum, drowns my objections. "Stung with Love", the subtitle Aaron gives his new translation, comes from the thrilling piece that German scholars found in '04. Another reason to buy this.

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The fourth title in the "five poets" anthology series which has featured "One Of Your Legs Is Both The Same", "Another Day On Your Foot And I Would Have Died", and "We Couldn't Provide Fish Thumbs". This volume features five more well-known poets. ... Read more

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The Manchester Carols is a collection of 12 carols, linked with a gentle, entertaining narration, which reshape and modernise the Christmas story. Its creators wanted to write something that is relevant to and reflects modern society, and which acknowledges the fact that even though someone might not subscribe to the religion behind the Nativity story, they can still appreciate it as an inspiring, magical tale. The carols are for everyone, believers or not and are a popular Christmas choice for choirs looking for a large scale concert piece. Published as a standalone piece, Mirabile Dictu, is the first carol in the collection, and is written for SATB choir and piano. ... Read more