This edition reintroduces Sappho to the modern reader, providing a vivid, contemporary translation, which captures the spareness and the intensity of Sappho's line. The wondrous Mary Barnard translation was based, unfortunately, on the 1928 Loeb edition by J.M. Edmonds, who filled in many of Sappho's fragment with his own Greek lines. In Professor Barnstone's brilliant translation, Sappho's work is presented as we have inherited it, in its darkly antiromantic idiom that rejects sentimentality and "prettiness."

Willis Barnstone is one of the most noted translators of today. Barnstone has translated numerous texts, includingThe Cosmic Fragments of Heraclitus, Greek Lyric Poetry, and a literary translation of the New Testament. He is also the author ofNew and Selected Poems (1997),Moonbook & Sunbook (1998) and other books of poetry.