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[[Image:sappho.png|thumb|First edition of ''Sappho'', 1904.]]
'''''Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics''''' is a book of poetry by [[Canadian poetry|Canadian poet]] [[Bliss Carman]]. It was first printed in 1904 in [[Boston]] by L.C. Page. Carman's cousin, and fellow [[Canadians|Canadian]] poet, [[Charles G.D. Roberts]] wrote an introductory essay, "The Poetry of Sappho."
[[Sappho]] was an [[Ancient Greece|Ancient Greek]] poet from the island of [[Lesbos]], who was included in the Greek [[Western canon|canon]] of [[nine lyric poets]]. Most of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her reputation has endured, supported by the surviving fragments of some of her poems.<ref>"[http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/318 Sappho]," Academy of American Poets, Poets.org, Web, May 20, 2011.</ref>
Carman's method, as Roberts saw it, "apparently, has been to imagine each lost lyric as discovered, and then to translate it; for the indefinable flavor of the translation is maintained throughout, though accompanied by the fluidity and freedom of purely original work." It was a daunting task, as Roberts admits: "It is as if a sculptor of to-day were to set himself, with reverence, and trained craftsmanship, and studious familiarity with the spirit, technique, and atmosphere of his subject, to restore some statues of [[Polykleitos|Polyclitus]] or [[Praxiteles]] of which he had but a broken arm, a foot, a knee, a finger upon which to build."<ref>Charles G.D. Roberts, [http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/confederation/Bliss%20Carman/sappho/introduction.htm Introduction] to Bliss Carman, ''Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics'', Canadian Poetry, UWO. Web, March 24, 2011.</ref> Yet, on the whole, Carman succeeded.
"Written more or less contemporaneously with the love poems in ''Songs of the Sea Children'', the Sappho reconstructions continue the amorous theme from a feminine point of view. Nevertheless, the feelings ascribed to Sappho are pure Carman in their sensitive and elegiac melancholy."<ref name="adams">John Coldwell Adams, "[http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/confederation/John%20Coldwell%20Adams/Confederation%20Voices/chapter%203.html Bliss Carman (1861-1929)]," ''Confederation Voices'', Canadian Poetry, UWO. Web, March 23, 2011</ref>
''Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics'' has a structure and unity that helps make it what has been called Carman's "finest volume of poetry."<ref name="bio">{{cite DCB |first=D.M.R. |last=Bentley |title=Carman, William Bliss |volume=15 |url=http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/carman_william_bliss_15E.html}}</ref> Virtually all of the lyrics are of high quality; some often-quoted are XXIII ("I loved thee, Atthis, in the long ago,"), LIV ("How soon will all my lovely days be over"), LXXIV ("If death be good"), LXXXII ("Over the roofs the honey-coloured moon")
"Next to ''Low Tide on Grand Pré'', ''Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics'' seems to be the collection that continues to find the most favour among Carman’s critics. D.M.R. Bentley, for example, calls it 'undoubtedly one of the most attractive, engaging and satisfying works of any of the Confederation poets.'"<ref name="adams"/>
Admirers of Carman's ''Sappho'' included insurance executive and future [[modernist literature|modernist]] poet [[Wallace Stevens]]. In January 1909, Stevens wrote to a friend:
{{quote|At the library yesterday, I skipped through a half-dozen little volumes of poetry by Bliss Carman. I felt the need for poetry – of hearing again about April and frogs and marsh-noises and the "honey-colored moon" — of seeing "oleanders/Glimmer in the moonlight". You remember the fragments of Sappho. Carman has taken taken fragments and imagined the whole of the poem of which each was a part. The result, in some instances, is immensely pleasant – although distinctly not Sapphic. Sappho’s passion came from her heart. Carman’s from a sense of warm beauty.<ref name="bentley">D.R. Bentley, "[http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/cpjrn/vol14/bentley.htm#bk1 Preface: Minor Poets of a Superior Order]," No. 14 (Spring/Summer 1984), ''Canadian Poetry: Studies/Documents/Reviews'', Canadian Poetry, UWO. Web, March 24, 2011.</ref>}}
Bentley argued that "the brief, crisp lyrics of the ''Sappho'' volume almost certainly contributed to the aesthetic and practice of [[Imagism]]."<ref name="bentley2">D.M.R. Bentley, "[http://www.canadianpoetry.ca/cpjrn/vol14/bentley.htm Preface: Minor Poets of a Superior Order]," ''Canadian Poetry: Studies/Documents/Reviews No. 14''', UWO, Web, April 16, 2011.</ref>
In 1998 Richard Carder gathered together musical settings  from ''Sappho'' by the composer and poet [[Ivor Gurney]] as ''Seven Sappho Songs''. It was first performed as a collection on the 29th October 1998 by Georgina Colwell (soprano) and Nigel Foster (piano) at the Blackheath Concert Halls in London, and published two years later. The seven songs are: "Soft Was The Wind", "I Shall Be Ever Maiden", "The Apple Orchard", "Hesperus", "Love Shakes My Soul", "The Quiet Mist" and "Lonely Night".<ref>Songfacts</ref>
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
* Full text of ''[http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/confederation/Bliss%20Carman/sappho/index.htm Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics]'' at Canadian Poetry Press.
* {{cite book
| url = http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12389
| title = Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics
| publisher = at [[Project Gutenberg]]
}}
* {{librivox book | title=Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics | author=Bliss CARMAN}}
[[Category:1904 poetry books]]
[[Category:Adaptations of works by Sappho]]
[[Category:Canadian poetry collections]]