If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

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The cover of If Not, Winter, showing torn fragments of papyrus.

Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho are thrilling to read, as much for the silences on the page as for the translated words themselves. Only one poem of Sappho’s has come to us complete; the rest of her poems exist as fragments, either in partially-legible manuscripts or in snippets of quotation made by other writers in the ancient world. In If Not, Winter, Carson uses brackets and oceans of white space to draw our attention to what is missing. 

Sappho, trans. Anne Carson. Excerpts from If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. New York: Knopf, 2002.

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Excerpt(s) from If Not, Winter, showing the Greek text in red ink and English translation in black ink on facing pages.

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If Not, Winter