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Perhaps the most perilous and the most alluring venture in the whole field of poetry is that which Mr. Carman has undertaken in attempting to give us in English verse those lost poems of Sappho of which fragments have survived. The task is obviously not one of translation or of paraphrasing, but of imaginative and, at the same time, interpretive construction. 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 Polyclitus or Praxiteles of which he had but a broken arm, a foot, a knee, a finger upon which to build. Mr. Carman's method, apparently, has been to imagine each lost lyric as discovered, and then to translate it; for the indefinable flavour of the translation is maintained throughout, though accompanied by the fluidity and freedom of purely original work.

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Sappho was an ancient Greek female poet who wrote lyrical poetry famous for its intense passion and description of love. Being born on the Isle of Lesbos she is also referred to as the first Lesbian poet. Little is known of her actual life, though she was born around 620BC, and died approximately 50 years later. Unfortunately, much of her poetry has been lost, although some poems have been painstakingly pieced together through surviving fragments. Bliss Carman (April 15, 1861 - June 8, 1929) was a Canadian poet and essayist mostly lived in New Canaan, Connecticut, USA. He is the author of more than 50 volumes of poetry, including Low Tide on Grand Pre (1893), Over the Wintry Threshold (1913), and Later Poems (1926), as well as four essay collections, including Talks on Poetry and Life (1926). Carman's honors include membership in the Royal Society of Canada in 1925, LL.D. by the University of New Brunswick in 1906, Lorne Pierce Gold Medal by the Royal Society of Canada in 1928, and posthumously, a medal by the Poetry Society of America.

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