After Callimachus

"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"--