I finished “If not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho” by Anne Carson last night. This is the second time I have gone through this book from start to finish. The last time was about 13-14 years ago. I have picked it up randomly over the years reading bits before putting it back on the shelf. When I read it through years ago, I was also reading Carson’s “Eros, the Bittersweet,” which has several essays about Sappho. It helped. Anne Carson, if you don’t know, is an Ancient Greek scholar, who is also (imho) one of the most interesting writers in English today. She is probably best known for “Autobiography of Red,” but NOX should be on everyone’s reading list. As with the last time I read “If not, Winter,” I was reminded of Guy Davenport’s “7 Greeks,” because of the number of poem fragments which were translated with gaps in parentheses. The empty spaces made me think about two things: 1) the importance of silence and the use of space in creating meaning, and 2) how much meaning one word can carry without effort, and how placing simple words next to each other opens portals into other worlds which go beyond what is contained in the solitary words by themselves.
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