Aaron Poochigian puts Sappho together by taking her apart. What’s most striking in this slim, enticing volume of accessible new translations is Poochigian’s two-pronged approach. He translates Sappho’s poems and fragments into simple, limpid lyrics that are easy to imagine being sung. He organizes the fragments into thematic sections (Goddesses; Desire and Death-Longing; Her Girls and Family; Troy; Maidens and Marriage; and The Wisdom of Sappho) that work a kind of synecdochic spell, making Sappho’s lost oeuvre seem less distant and more imaginable as a whole. Poochigian’s technique (both as translator and editor), in addition to his thorough and informative introduction, works to give readers an unusually user-friendly version of this inexhaustible but elusive poet.

Sappho’s poetry is compelling for many reasons. Her reputation in antiquity and the fact that 90 percent of her oeuvre is lost are strong attractors, but such factors wouldn’t matter were it not for the power of the remnants we still possess. Faced with a daunting mass of fragments (we have only a handful of poems that are anything like complete), some translators have opted for the effect of lapidary shards, gnomic utterances that sound a little like Pound, who was of course himself channeling Sappho (“Spring … too long … Gongyla.”). Other translators such as Richmond Lattimore have turned out very competent Sapphic meters; others have chosen free verse. Carol Ann Duffy notes in the preface that “the list of poets who have translated