Contemporary translations and adaptations of ancient Greek poet Callimachus by noted writer and critic Stephanie Burt
Callimachus may be the best-kept secret in all of ancient poetry. Loved and admired by later Greeks and Romans, his funny, sexy, generous, thoughtful, learned, sometimes elaborate, and always articulate lyric poems, hymns, epigrams, and short stories in verse have gone without a contemporary poetic champion, until now. In After Callimachus, esteemed poet and critic Stephanie Burt's attentive translations and inspired adaptations introduce the work, spirit, and letter of Callimachus to today's poetry readers.
Skillfully combining intricate patterns of sound and classical precedent with the very modern concerns of sex, gender, love, death, and technology, these poems speak with a twenty-first-century voice, while also opening multiple gateways to ancient worlds. This Callimachus travels the Mediterranean, pays homage to Athena and Zeus, develops erotic fixations, practices funerary commemoration, and brings fresh gifts for the cult of Artemis. This reimagined poet also visits airports, uses Tumblr and Twitter, listens to pop music, and fights contemporary patriarchy. Burt bears careful fealty to Callimachus's whole poems, even as she builds freely from some of the hundreds of surviving fragments. Here is an ancient Greek poet made fresh for our times. An informative foreword by classicist Mark Payne places Burt's renderings of Callimachus in literary and historical context.
After Callimachus is at once a contribution to contemporary poetry and a new endeavor in the art of classical adaptation and translation.
"This is a collection of free translations from the ancient Greek poet Callimachus, whose surviving work includes the Aitia, a narrative elegy; the Iambi, short poems on occasional themes; and the Hecale, a small-scale epic. The poet and critic Stephanie Burt has written contemporary adaptations of what she calls "Callimachus's lyric, epigrammatic, and narrative genius for our times." These are not literal translations for students of Greek, but instead free translations intended to bring poetry of classical antiquity into modern verse. Considered a major poet in Greek and European readings but not yet in English, Callimachus is remembered for a few sayings, among them "mega biblion, mega kakon": a big, or long, or great book (an epic, for example) is a great evil, or a big, bad thing. Burt's intention is to make Callimachus' "miniaturist, irony-loving, anti-macho sensibility" more accessible to Anglophone readers, with the advantage that Callimachus "speaks without centuries of great English poets who have already adapted him." The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation embraces a wide geographic and temporal range, from Scandinavia to Latin America to the subcontinent of India, from the Tang Dynasty to Europe of the modern day. It especially emphasizes poets who are established in their native lands and who are being introduced to an English-speaking audience"--
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After Callimachus is a substantial, fresh and entertaining collection, and a fine work of translation."
---David Caddy, Tears in the Fence ???????
