Sappho of Lesbos - Complete Poems and Fragments (14 books)

* Sappho of Lesbos - Complete Poems and Fragments (14 books)

SAPPHO OF LESBOS (c. 630–570 BCE) is one of the earliest and most celebrated lyric poets of ancient Greece. Writing in the Aeolic dialect and performing her poems to the accompaniment of the lyre, Sappho composed songs that were intensely personal in tone yet grounded in shared ritual and social experience.  Even in fragmentary form, her poetry is renowned for its precision, emotional immediacy, and striking imagery, earning her extraordinary admiration in antiquity, where she was often called "the Tenth Muse".

Unlike the epic poetry of Homer, Sappho’s work belongs to the tradition of lyric poetry, composed for small-scale performance rather than public recitation.  Her poems explore love, desire, jealousy, memory, and beauty, often from a first-person perspective and frequently addressing or depicting relationships between women.  These themes are not presented abstractly but through vivid physical sensations—sleeplessness, trembling, sweetness, fire—rendered in a language of remarkable clarity and control.

Sappho’s poetry was deeply embedded in the social and religious life of her community.  Many scholars believe her songs were composed for performance within a thiasos, a circle of young women associated with education, ritual, and the worship of Aphrodite.  The goddess of love appears repeatedly in Sappho’s work, not as a distant mythic figure but as an intimate presence, invoked as ally, comforter, and power governing human desire.  This fusion of the personal, the communal, and the divine is one of Sappho’s defining achievements.

Only a small portion of Sappho’s poetry survives, preserved in quotations by later authors and in fragmentary papyri recovered in modern times.  Yet these fragments are often astonishingly complete in effect, suggesting entire emotional worlds within a few lines.  Her mastery of form—including the Sapphic stanza, later adopted by Latin and modern poets—reveals a poet of technical sophistication as well as expressive intensity.

Sappho’s influence has been vast and enduring.  Ancient writers ranked her alongside Homer; later European poets drew on her imagery and meters; and in the modern period she has become a central figure in discussions of gender, sexuality, and authorship.  Despite the accidents of transmission that reduced her corpus to fragments, Sappho remains one of the most powerful and distinctive voices to survive from antiquity, offering a rare and compelling vision of lyric poetry at its origin.


The following books are in ePUB and/or PDF format as indicated:

* Come Close [tr. Poochigian] (Penguin, 2015) – ePUB
* Complete Poems [tr. Barnstone] (Shambhala, 2009) – ePUB + PDF
* Complete Poems & Fragments [tr. Lombardo] (Hackett, 2016) – ePUB
* Complete Works (Delphi Classics, 2015) – ePUB
* How to Be Queer: Ancient Guide to Sexuality (Princeton, 2024) – ePUB
* If Not, Winter [tr. Carson] (Vintage, 2003) – ePUB + PDF
* Pocket Sappho [tr. Barnstone] (Shambhala, 2019) – ePUB
* Poems & Fragments [tr. Balmer] (Bloodaxe, 2018) – ePUB
* Poetry of Sappho [tr. Powell] (Oxford, 2007) – PDF
* Poetry of Sappho: Expanded Edition [tr. Powell] (Oxford, 2019) – ePUB
* Sappho: A New Translation [tr. Barnard] (California, 2019) – ePUB + PDF
* Sappho: A New Translation [tr. Rayor] (Cambridge, 2014) – ePUB + PDF
* Sappho's Lyre [tr. Rayor] (California, 1991) – PDF
* Searching for Sappho [tr. Freeman] (Norton, 2016) – ePUB
* Stung with Love: Poems & Fragments [tr. Poochigian] (Penguin, 2009) – ePUB


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