An aside…. (I seem to be offering a lot of asides these days.)

Mention of Jim Powell...

Jim Powell is a very fine poet. His collection It Was Fever That Made The World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) contains some very strong poems indeed, among my favourites of those written in the past two decades - on either side of the Pond. Perhaps the one I love most from that book is "Housekeeping". He has several convincing translations from the Latin, too. (He is a specialist in classics, I believe.)

Kind regards

Clive


[This message has been edited by Clive Watkins (edited July 08, 2004).]

Paul--The Powell translation is very nice indeed (though I haven't gone back to look at the Greek to test its accuracy). It's purely accentual, but with a hint of heavy vowels moved into position, and with easy subsitutions in the second and third feet to keep it light.

One of the reasons I like sapphics is they can be as solemn as the ones I did above, or as light as these. Latin or Greek, as it were--though Horace can do light, God knows, and the Greeks can do stately when they put their minds to it.

Jody

Thanks to Jody and Chris for posting the best collection of Sapphics in English I've seen and providing such good commentary and analysis. I may print and keep this great collection for future use.

Clive, glad you're a fan of Jim Powell. Many of the poems in It Was Fever That Made the World go back to when Jim and I were hanging out together almost every day in Berkeley, commenting on each other's poems and editing Occident. One of the poems in that book--can't remember the title-- is an epistle addressed to me about those days. Jim was studying for a Ph. D. in Comparative Lit. I was just hanging out and auditing a Latin class--and secretly gathering impressions for my novel Among the Immortals.

Now that we're back in touch again, I might send him your kind comments about his work--with your permission.

I'm very fond of Frost's hendecasyllabics in "For Once, Then, Something." It's remarkable to me how unstiff, unforced they seem, while maintaining the meter in virtually every line: trochee, dactyl, trochee, trochee, trichee: Others taunt me with having knelt at well curbs.....

I notice Steele opens with a strong versionof the meter, then allows the voice to alternate quite a bit, which seems a sensible English solution. One isn't doing quantitative meter, but using the template of a quantitative meter for an accentual-syllabic poem. Guesses about Homer's lines suggest that the flexibility was all in the qualtity, not in the meter itself, so the meter could be rigid but sound flexible. In English we've got to make the flexibility by other means, though sentence syntax, enjambment, etc.

Anyway, if this thread is still going when I get home later this month I'll type in some of John Nims's experiments with classical meters.......

Paul, I wonder if you perhaps know my professor Alan Shapiro? I think he might have been at Berkeley for a while, knew Tim Steele (?) and others there, & probably Powell as well, since he has praised his poetry in class very highly, though I think he might have found the man somewhat hard to get along with. Anyway, to my recollection of Fragment 16, the one you posted, his translation is very accurate; & here's another one of his Sapphos, which fills in some fragmentary Greek text but otherwise seems to my possibly spotty memory admirably faithful. I forget which fragment number this is; the editor calls it "The Anactoria Poem":

Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers,
others call a fleet the most beautiful of
sights the dark earth offers, but I say it's what-
ever you love best.

And it's easy to make this understood by
everyone, for she who surpassed all human
kind in beauty, Helen, abandoning her
husband--that best of

men--went sailing off to the shores of Troy and
never spent a thought on her child or loving
parents: when the goddess seduced her wits and
left her to wander,

she forgot them all, she could not remember
anything but longing, and lightly straying
aside, lost her way. But that reminds me
now: Anactória,

she's not here, and I'd rather see her lovely
step, her sparkling glance and her face than gaze on
all the troops in Lydia in their chariots and
glittering armor.

And another Powell, Fragment 1:

Artfully adorned Aphrodite, deathless
child of Zeus and weaver of wiles I beg you
please don't hurt me, don't overcome my spirit,
goddess, with longing,

but come here, if ever at other moments
hearing these my words from afar you listened
and responded: leaving your father's house, all
golden, you came then,

hitching up your chariot: lovely sparrows
drew you quickly over the dark earth, whirling
on fine beating wings from the heights of heaven
down through the sky and

instantly arrived - and then O my blessed
goddess with a smile on your deathless face you
asked me what the matter was this time, what I
called you for this time,

what I now most wanted to happen in my
raving heart: "Whom this time should I persuade to
lead you back again to her love? Who now, oh
Sappho, who wrongs you?

If she flees you now, she will soon pursue you;
if she won't accept what you give, she'll give it;
if she doesn't love you, she'll love you soon now,
even unwilling."

Come to me again, and release me from this
want past bearing. All that my heart desires to
happen - make it happen. And stand beside me,
goddess, my ally.

I'll post again with rival versions of these same poems by Richmond Lattimore, for comparison's sake.

Here are Richmond Lattimore's Rival versions.

Fragment 1:

Throned in splendor, deathless, O Aphrodite,
child of Zeus, charm-fashioner, I entreat you
not with griefs and bitternesses to break my
spirit, O goddess;

standing by me rather, if once before now
far away you heard, when I called upon you,
left your father's dwelling place and descended,
yoking the golden

chariot to sparrows, who fairly drew you
down in speed aslant the black world, the bright air
trembling at the heart to the pulse of countless
fluttering wingbeats.

Swiftly then they came, and you, blessed lady,
smiling on me out of immortal beauty,
asked me what affliction was on me, why I
called thus upon you,

what beyond all else I would have befall my
tortured heart: "Whom then would you have Persuasion
force to serve desire in your heart? Who is it,
Sappho, that hurt you?

Though she now escape you, she soon will follow;
though she take not gifts from you, she will give them:
though she love not, yet she will surely love you
even unwilling."

In such guise come even again and set me
free from doubt and sorrow; accomplish all those
things my heart desires to be done; appear and
stand at my shoulder.

Fragment 16:

Like the very gods in my sight is he who
sits where he can look in your eyes, who listens
close to you, to hear the soft voice, its sweetness
murmur in love and

laughter, all for him. But it breaks my spirit;
underneath my breast all the heart is shaken.
Let me only glance where you are, the voice dies,
I can say nothing,

but my lips are stricken to silence, under-
neath my skin the tenuous flame suffuses;
nothing shows in front of my eyes, my ears are
muted in thunder.

And the sweat breaks running upon me, fever
Shakes my body, paler I turn than grass is;
I can feel that I have been changed, I feel that
death has come near me.

The Anactoria One:

Some there are who say that the fairest thing seen
on the black earth is an array of horsemen;
some, men marching; some would say ships; but I say
she whom one loves best

is the loveliest. Light were the work to make this
plain to all, since she, who surpassed in beauty
all mortality, Helen, once forsaking
her lordly husband,

fled away to Troy--land across the water.
Not the thought of child nor beloved parents
was remembered, after the Queen of Cyprus
won her at first sight.

Since young brides have hearts that can be persuaded
easily, light things, palpitant to passion
as am I, remembering Anaktória
who has gone from me

and whose lovely walk and the shining pallor
of her face I would rather see before my
eyes than Lydia's chariots in all their glory
armored for battle.

Please, excuse, Jody, this further aside, the last from me on this thread…. Honest!

oOo

Dear Paul

The poem dedicated to you is called “Heights”, an extended meditation on place and history, couched in loose but lissom blank verse.

One of the many things I admire about It Was Fever That Made The World is the elegant and extended unfolding of the sentences to be seen in so many poems – sinuous and expressive. For me, much of the formal beauty of well-made verse, whether metrical or non-metrical, stems from the play of the sentence within the matrix of the line. There is abundant evidence here of Jim’s Powell’s skill in that particular art.

Another admirable quality is what used to be called invention, the ability to develop a topic, a flow of themes and images, over stretches longer than seems ot me usual in some collections and on the pages of some magazines – and, indeed, here at Eratosphere, perhaps.

Please do pass on to him my enthusiasm for his book.

Kind regards

Clive

oOo


Back to you, Jody….

Chris, though the Lattimore sounds pretty good in all three cases, I much prefer Jim Powell's versions. I was trying to find his translation of Fragment 1 on the internet so I wouldn't have to type it, but that's my favorite translation of Sappho, so thanks for posting it. I think that translation is the gold standard, in fact.

Jim's own poetics, seen most easily in his Chicago book, It Was Fever, were formed by melding classical meters and English accentual verse. He wrote what I consider the definitive essay on Pound's verse, "The Light of Vers Libre," which was published in the Pound journal Paideuma (when he was an undergraduate!!!). In the essay, which I quote from and rely on heavily in my essay "Disorderly Orders: Free Verse, Chaos, and the Tradition," he shows pretty convincingly that Pound was freely adapting Greek meters in his best verse; Jim admits that much of ol' Ez's verse is much sloppier and more genuinely free of meter. In Jim's own poetry, the quantity of vowells and the extra stress they give are important factors in the verse's music. I was always urging him, sometimes with success, mostly not, to make his music and meter more regular and to use iambics more frequently than he usually does, since it's such a flexible meter in English. But I'm rather glad he stuck to his guns and made his own distinctive music, which pleases my ear and which I've grown to admire more over the years.

Yes, I know Alan Shapiro. Alan, though younger than I, was already at Stanford when I arrived and in fact was an initial reader of the manuscript I submitted to get accepted. To my knowledge, Alan never taught at Berkeley, though he did do a couple of short semester stints at various places after leaving Stanford as a writing fellow and Jones Lecturer. He must have met Jim Powell in the Bay area at some point, most likely after I left for Arkansas.

Even as a relative youngster, Jim was rather cantankerous. I met Jim when we were 28 and 27, respectively. He is quite brilliant and often difficult, though almost alone among the group we hung out with then, I was unique in having only one brief tiff with him,which we quickly made up. We stayed friends for a while after I moved to Arkansas, then he had serious employment and money problems that made him even more difficult. I played a minor part in helping him get the MacArthur Fellowship for which he was nominated, then I didn't hear from him again for a long time. But now we're back in touch again by email. And the poems he's been writing since Fever are very much in the same mode. He's also added German to the languages he reads and translates.

Clive, I share your admiration for Jim's sinous syntax and ability to develop and idea or image over a large section of a poem. I'll pass along your comments.

Well, given the recommendation of you three (that is, Paul, Clive & Alan), I've just ordered his book. Thanks to you, Paul, for the information about him. I much agree with you that his versions are superior to Lattimore's--I like some of Lattimore's lines, but overall they're stuffy & heavy & excessively formal in a way that Sappho & Powell are not. What you say about Powell's use of the Greek meters is very interesting; I too believe that quantity plays a much larger role in English versification than many would credit, though I don't have any theories about it. But I have no doubt an ear attuned to the classical meters will make one a better, more supple & interesting metrist even in English.

Chris