Greek Lyric Poetry
A New Translation
3 November 2006
Description
Winner of the Umhoefer Prize: "A magnificent achievement, better, more animated, buoyant, and richly articulated than any other version I know."—Anthony Hecht
Sherod Santos's new translation of classical poems answers Rosetti's mandate that "the only true motive for putting poetry into a fresh language must be to endow a fresh nation…with one more possession of beauty." Arranged into four periods—Classical, Hellenic, Roman, and Early Byzantine—Greek Lyric Poetry features works by such ancient masters as Xenophanes, Callimachus, Sappho, and Simonides. For the general reader as well as for poets and lovers of poetry, the translations celebrate the marvelous slips and illuminating reconfigurations that occur when a poet in the present communes with poets in the past.
Reviews
"Greek Lyric Poetry covers the full range of the lyric . . . including many unfamiliar poems that are themselves like archaeological discoveries because never before have they found their finished and beautiful expression in English. Santos takes fragments and epigrammatic stanzas and makes each a singing erotic, caustic, or descriptive lyric." — Willis Barnstone
Also By: Sherod Santos 
Square Inch Hours: Poems
Paperback, 2019
“Sherod Santos brilliantly negotiates the provinces of poetry and prose, of imagination and memoir.… As enigmatic as Borges, and beautiful in a way only Santos can be.” —David Baker
Square Inch Hours: Poems
E Book, 2017
“Sherod Santos brilliantly negotiates the provinces of poetry and prose, of imagination and memoir.… As enigmatic as Borges, and beautiful in a way only Santos can be.” —David Baker
The Intricated Soul: New and Selected Poems
Paperback, 2012
“Santos captures moments of lyric intensity and beauty that feel as fresh today as when they were written.”—New Criterion
The Perishing: Poems
Paperback, 2004
"[Santos] articulates some of the most moving truths we can know about our shared humanity."—Washington Post
The Pilot Star Elegies: Poems
Paperback, 2000
A National Book Award finalist for 1999.