Two Epigrams by Catullus

Translated by Christopher Childers   72. You used to say I was your only love, Lesbia, and you’d take me over Jove. I cared for more than sex—I loved you all, as a father loves his sons and sons-in-law. I know you now, and burn more bitterly, the more you seem cheap and corrupt to me. How can this be, you ask? Your callousness drives me to love you more, and like you less.   83. Lesbia bashes me when hubby’s near; that’s what the... Read More

Crossing the Water with the Argonauts

The Lighthouse at Alexandria (from the series The Eighth Wonders of the World). After Maarten van Heemskerck, 1572. Artist: Galle, Philipp (1537-1612) by Christopher Childers Apollonius of Rhodes. Jason and the Argonauts. Translated by Aaron Poochigian. Penguin Classics 2014. 272 pp. $15.00 (paper) ✥✥✥ Not one body, but five : This surprising announcement came in January, nearly three months after the disappointing news that none had been found... Read More

Brass Tacks

Kiki Dimoula in Athens by A. E. Stallings Kiki Dimoula. The Brazen Plagiarist: Selected Poems. Translated by Cecile Inglessis Margellos and Rika Lesser. Yale University Press: Margellos World Republic of Letters 2012. 392 pp. $30.00 ✥✥✥ Athens is not the most obviously poetic of cities. Sure, the Parthenon, stripped of its garish paint as well as its marbles, stands in timeless glamour over the city, but twentieth-century influxes of population... Read More

François Villon’s Ballade: A Good Lesson for Bad Men,
Ballade of Fortune & Charity

Translated by David Georgi Ballade: A Good Lesson for Bad Men from The Testament, lines 1692–1719 Say you sell indulgences or cheat at cards, or dice all day, or stamp false coins (and so get burned with others scalded for that crime, lying faithless traitors all), or burgle, pilfer, or purloin: where do you suppose your profit goes? All to the taverns and the girls. Rhyme or riff, play flute or cymbals as beguiling, shameless fools do; clown, swindle,... Read More