Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics: A Romantic Rendering by Bliss Carman

Sappho was the founder of the Western lyric tradition. Sappho's all-female academy was for Western lyric poetry what Plato's all-male academy was for Western philosophy-its point of origin in the form that we know and understand it. Plato himself hailed Sappho as the tenth muse. Yet all but a tiny handful of her works are lost-probably deliberately destroyed. In 1907, Bliss Carman imaginatively reconstructed one hundred lyrics from the remaining fragments in the manner of the Romantic Era. This charming book has been long out of print, having been antithetical to the anti-Romantic spirit of the mid and late 20th century. This edition includes an introduction by Miss Marianne Martindale and a new poem by Sappho discovered in 2005 (bringing the total of her surviving complete poems to four) and translated in the romantic style by Sushuri Madonna.