jess_louise_'s review
challenging
funny
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.75
christian_mcguire's review against another edition
funny
informative
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.5
M.L. West's version has some distinct choices that I appreciate. This particular book is not all of surviving Greek lyric poetry. Pindar and Bacchylides are excluded, partly because they would go at the chronological end of this book and represent a transition out of the era of poetry this book focuses on, and partly because they ought to have their own books because so much more of their work survives.
What we do get is a miscellany of all surviving Greek lyric poetry from archaic Greece (as in, before classical Greece). There's roughly three dozen poets, and their surviving body of poetry ranges from a couple lines, to a couple dozen pages of fragments with some longer, closer-to-complete poems included. West is very honest in his editing of the book about the fragmentary nature of the material. There's very few complete or near-complete poems, and most of it is short fragments missing context. It is kind of an archeological reading experience, as opposed to a cohesive conceptual poetry collection.
tldr: I'd sooner recommend this to people interested in Greek culture, than poetry nerds, although for the best experience, you should be both. Most of all, I recommend this to classicists who can't read ancient Greek themselves and need an English translation. The material isn't a very enjoyable read for most people but West does a great job with it.
Some other observations:
If you are going to enjoy this as poetry, first off, good luck. A lot of the poems are lacking context, partly due to being incomplete, and partly because they include esoteric references. Knowing a lot about Greek mythology will help, but sometimes the poems are just personal to the poet and will inevitably be lost on modern readers. Some of the longer poems are relatable enough, however for many of the fragments, they are best enjoyed like Haiku; very easy poetry that is meant to be the beginning of a meditation.
This book has the earliest literotica I'm aware of. There's even some curious nuances to it. Poems explicitly describing heterosexual sex appear early on, in the 600's, and in the context of fertility rituals. These poems are intended to arouse the audience for... procreative purposes lets say. This seems to end afterwards, or the shipwreck of time makes it look that way. Replacing it going forward, the book becomes more bisexual. The horny poems become a little more subtle, and begin to focus on "boys" (as in, not exactly adults). I find the openness with sexuality, and the queerness of it by modern standards, and even how it evolved over the three centuries, to be interesting. These also are quite likely the most relatable poems in the book as they don't rely on references.
Sappho is the best. Barnard is still the best Sappho translation in English but West does a fine job. Her poetry is the most relatable, beautiful, stylistically accessable due to being plain and blunt for her time and meditative. She's the most famous Greek lyric poet despite having far fewer surviving works than Pindar and Bacchylides for a reason. Solon is the other recognizable name here but that is because of his political career. His lyric poet hobby is a pleasant surprise.
I speculate that the reason why these poems have aged worse than most other genres of classical literature is because they aren't very relevant. The main thematic trend of lyric poetry is that there is no trends. The poems are about all sorts of things and a lot of them aren't very important. This is unlike, say, epic poetry, which has aged incredibly. There's also the fact that rather than having a smaller number of longer works, lyric poetry is a great number of minor works, so what we get is an unknown percentage of them. With an individual epic poem, that will survive. With an individual lyric poem, who knows.
The intro is probably the most worthwhile part here if you are poetry-averse. It is a historical and biographical rundown, and gives information on all the poets, as well as other useful information. West's translation, editing, notes ect are quite well done.
What we do get is a miscellany of all surviving Greek lyric poetry from archaic Greece (as in, before classical Greece). There's roughly three dozen poets, and their surviving body of poetry ranges from a couple lines, to a couple dozen pages of fragments with some longer, closer-to-complete poems included. West is very honest in his editing of the book about the fragmentary nature of the material. There's very few complete or near-complete poems, and most of it is short fragments missing context. It is kind of an archeological reading experience, as opposed to a cohesive conceptual poetry collection.
tldr: I'd sooner recommend this to people interested in Greek culture, than poetry nerds, although for the best experience, you should be both. Most of all, I recommend this to classicists who can't read ancient Greek themselves and need an English translation. The material isn't a very enjoyable read for most people but West does a great job with it.
Some other observations:
If you are going to enjoy this as poetry, first off, good luck. A lot of the poems are lacking context, partly due to being incomplete, and partly because they include esoteric references. Knowing a lot about Greek mythology will help, but sometimes the poems are just personal to the poet and will inevitably be lost on modern readers. Some of the longer poems are relatable enough, however for many of the fragments, they are best enjoyed like Haiku; very easy poetry that is meant to be the beginning of a meditation.
This book has the earliest literotica I'm aware of. There's even some curious nuances to it. Poems explicitly describing heterosexual sex appear early on, in the 600's, and in the context of fertility rituals. These poems are intended to arouse the audience for... procreative purposes lets say. This seems to end afterwards, or the shipwreck of time makes it look that way. Replacing it going forward, the book becomes more bisexual. The horny poems become a little more subtle, and begin to focus on "boys" (as in, not exactly adults). I find the openness with sexuality, and the queerness of it by modern standards, and even how it evolved over the three centuries, to be interesting. These also are quite likely the most relatable poems in the book as they don't rely on references.
Sappho is the best. Barnard is still the best Sappho translation in English but West does a fine job. Her poetry is the most relatable, beautiful, stylistically accessable due to being plain and blunt for her time and meditative. She's the most famous Greek lyric poet despite having far fewer surviving works than Pindar and Bacchylides for a reason. Solon is the other recognizable name here but that is because of his political career. His lyric poet hobby is a pleasant surprise.
I speculate that the reason why these poems have aged worse than most other genres of classical literature is because they aren't very relevant. The main thematic trend of lyric poetry is that there is no trends. The poems are about all sorts of things and a lot of them aren't very important. This is unlike, say, epic poetry, which has aged incredibly. There's also the fact that rather than having a smaller number of longer works, lyric poetry is a great number of minor works, so what we get is an unknown percentage of them. With an individual epic poem, that will survive. With an individual lyric poem, who knows.
The intro is probably the most worthwhile part here if you are poetry-averse. It is a historical and biographical rundown, and gives information on all the poets, as well as other useful information. West's translation, editing, notes ect are quite well done.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism and Sexual content
Moderate: Pedophilia
emicordelia's review
challenging
funny
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
3.0
I prefer other translations but not bad
checkers09's review against another edition
2.0
Greek lyric poetry by M.L. West contains Lyric poems from the most praised poets from the 8th to 5th century BCE during the Archaic age in Greek history.
For starters, it's incredible we even have any record of these poems at all, considering most of them are over 2500 years old! unfortunately, it shows in how fragmentary a lot of them are, many verses are cobbled together with brackets and breaks in the sentence, which make it hard to understand. on top of that, the poems themselves aren't easy to follow on their own, it seems like the poets just wanted to add as many beautiful quotes and sentences as they could even if they have absolutely no meaning to the poem as a whole. Not all of the poems were incoherent, though, and I did enjoy Simonides and Sappho's poetry, surprisingly, as I never thought I would like love poetry.
For starters, it's incredible we even have any record of these poems at all, considering most of them are over 2500 years old! unfortunately, it shows in how fragmentary a lot of them are, many verses are cobbled together with brackets and breaks in the sentence, which make it hard to understand. on top of that, the poems themselves aren't easy to follow on their own, it seems like the poets just wanted to add as many beautiful quotes and sentences as they could even if they have absolutely no meaning to the poem as a whole. Not all of the poems were incoherent, though, and I did enjoy Simonides and Sappho's poetry, surprisingly, as I never thought I would like love poetry.
alexaraqueld's review
funny
medium-paced
2.75
The greeks can be funny but also — please get to the point
theycallmelech's review
2.0
Favourite sentence was Anacreon's 'Herotima, you public, public road.' I feel like there's a story there.