Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments of Sappho

Aaron Poochigian's lyrical translations preserve the musical style of Sappho's songs. In his introduction he discusses the theories surrounding Sappho's life and love affairs, and the enduring influence of her works.

150 years after Homer's Iliad, Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos, west off the coast of Turkey. Little remains of her writings, which are said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria some 500 years after her death. This title covers this surviving texts that consists of fragmented body of lyric poetry.

'We hear the voice of a great and enduring poet in our ear again' Carol Ann Duffy

'Go, girls, pursue the violet Muses' bright
Gifts and the plangent lyre, lover of hymns'

By turns subversive, erotic and poignant, Sappho is one of the most versatile and exquisite poets in Classical literature. Invoking female deities, Sappho summons the Muses for inspiration and beseeches Aphrodite's allegiance in a battle of the heart, while episodes from the Trojan War are told from a woman's perspective as Helen makes her fateful choice between family and love, and Andromache arrives in Troy to marry Hector. Here, too, Sappho sings of the lives of mortals, as a lover describes the torments of unrequited lust, a mother speaks tenderly to her daughter, and young brides leave their homes to meet their new husbands.

Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Aaron Poochigian
With a Foreword by Carol Ann Duffy