If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
The definitive modern translation of Sappho. Carson presents every surviving fragment with the gaps marked as brackets, making the incompleteness itself a form of meaning. Reading "[ ] / [ ] / [ ] desire" is to feel both what Sappho wrote and what time has destroyed. Carson's decision to present the fragments as fragments transformed translation into an original act of poetics. The most beautiful translation of the 20th century.
Be clear about what you are buying: a few intact poems, then page after page holding two words and a field of brackets. Carson's austerity makes the ruin eloquent, but it also means the book is mostly absence at full price, and the spare notes leave you alone with scholarship she chose not to share.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
