If Not, Winter

This book presents the surviving fragments of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, whose lyrics of the seventh and sixth centuries BCE remain only in quotations and on damaged papyri. The pieces address desire, friendship, marriage, and ritual, often speaking to or about women of Lesbos, and they invoke Aphrodite and other gods in a voice that is personal rather than epic. Gaps in the text are left visible, so the reader meets broken lines and isolated phrases as well as a few longer poems. The volume is a bilingual gathering of lyric remnants, not a reconstructed continuous narrative and not a modern artist's manifesto.

Bound in mid-blue spine title blocked cloth with inset letterpress printed label. Dark blue slipcase with colour pictorial front. Gilded page tops. White ribbon marker.