Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Carson, Anne - Alan Jacobs (review date March-April 2003)

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Alan Jacobs (review date March-April 2003)

SOURCE: Jacobs, Alan. “The Re-Invention of Love.” Books and Culture 9, no. 2 (March-April 2003): 10-13.

[In the following review, Jacobs notes that “eros is [Carson's] great preoccupation” in If Not, Winter.]

Anne Carson's new translation of the poetry of Sappho [If Not, Winter] seems an act of veneration. Sappho is the most archaic and mysterious, and probably the most celebrated, of ancient lyric poets; later Greeks would call her the “tenth Muse,” She lived in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. on the island of Lesbos, off the coast of Asia Minor, not far south of Troy. Most of her poems, which were always set to music, describe erotic passion and its consequences; many of those poems concern desire for other women. There is a legend that Sappho, desperately in (unrequited) love with the “most beautiful of men,” a dashing sailor named Phaon, threw herself...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Guy Davenport (review date spring 1987)
   2. Barbara K. Gold (review date fall 1990)
   3. Judith Kitchen (review date fall 1993)
   4. Alexander M. Forbes (review date spring 1995)
   5. Brain Evenson (review date fall 1995)
   6. Sandra M. Gilbert (review date August 1996)
   7. Adam Phillips (review date fall 1996)
   8. Elisabeth Frost (review date November 1996)
   9. Richard Holinger (review date winter 1997)
   10. Gail Wronsky (review date spring 1997)
   11. Jeff Hamilton (review date summer-fall 1997)
   12. Nicole Cooley (review date fall 1998)
   13. Bernard Knox (review date 19 November 1998)
   14. Sharon Wahl (review date spring 1999)
   15. Jed Rasula (review date summer-autumn 1999)
   16. Robert Lamberton (review date winter 2000)
   17. Phoebe Pettingell (review date March-April 2000)
   18. Stanley Corngold (review date April 2000)
   19. Anne Carson and Stephen Burt (interview date 3 April 2000)
   20. Ian Rae (essay date autumn 2000)
   21. Elizabeth Lowry (review date 5 October 2000)
   22. Harriet Zinnes (essay date February 2001)
   23. Anne Carson and Mary Gannon (interview date March-April 2001)
   24. Josephine Balmer (review date 25 May 2001)
   25. David C. Ward (essay date May-June 2001)
   26. Ian Rae (review date summer 2001)
   27. John Burt (review date autumn 2001)
   28. Chris Jennings (essay date fall 2001)
   29. Priscilla Long (review date October 2001)
   30. David Baker (review date spring 2002)
   31. Roger Gilbert (essay date spring 2002)
   32. Peter Green (review date 7 October 2002)
   33. Alan Jacobs (review date March-April 2003)
   34. Carol Moldaw (review date spring 2003)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright