Category: Poetry

Author Ovid Description “A version that has been long awaited, and likely to become the new standard.” —Michael Dirda, Washington PostOvid’s epic poem—whose theme of change has resonated throughout the ages—is one of the most important texts of Western imagination, an inspiration from Dante’s times to the present day, when writers such as Salman Rushdie […]

Author Heid E. Erdrich Description In a new collection that is “a force of nature” (Amy Gerstler), renowned Native poet Heid E. Erdrich applies her rich inventive voice and fierce wit to the deforming effects of harassment and oppression.Little Big Bully begins with a question asked of a collective and troubled we – how did […]

Author Herbert Mason Description National Book Award Finalist: The most widely read and enduring interpretation of this ancient Babylonian epic.   One of the oldest and most universal stories known in literature, the epic of Gilgamesh presents the grand, timeless themes of love and death, loss and reparations, within the stirring tale of a hero-king […]

Author Marie de France Description Winner of the 2016 Northern California Book Award for Translation of Poetry.Honorable Mention for the 2015 Modern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize For Translation of a Literary Work.Marie de France was a medieval poet who was probably born in France and who lived in England during the twelfth […]

Author Homer Description While preserving the basic narrative of the Iliad, this selection also highlights the epic’s high poetic moments and essential mythological content, and will prove especially useful in surveys of world literature.

Author Hesiod Description “Robert Lamberton’s Introduction is an excellent, concise exposition of current scholarly debate: his notes are informative and helpful. . . . Those who want a translation that captures something of the spirit of an ancient Greek poetic voice and its cultural milieu and transmits it in an appealing, lively, and accessible style […]

Author Hesiod Description Hesiod, who lived in Boetia in the late eighth century BC, is one of the oldest known, and possibly the oldest of Greek poets. His Theogony contains a systematic genealogy of the gods from the beginning of the world and an account of the struggles of the Titans. In contrast, Works and […]

Author Virgil Description Virgil’s great epic transforms the Homeric tradition into a triumphal statement of the Roman civilizing mission. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald.

Author Robert Fitzgerald Description Anger be now your song, immortal one,Akhilleus’ anger, doomed and ruinous, that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter lossand crowded brave souls into the undergloom, leaving so many dead men-carrionfor dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.-Lines 1-6Since it was first published more than twenty-five years ago, Robert […]

Author Glyn Burgess Description On 15 August 778, Charlemagne’s army was returning from a successful expedition against Saracen Spain when its rearguard was ambushed in a remote Pyrenean pass. Out of this skirmish arose a stirring tale of war, which was recorded in the oldest extant epic poem in French. The Song of Roland, written […]