The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek Poets [Paperback]

Michael Schmidt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 14, 2006

A dazzling literary exploration by acclaimed poet and critic Michael Schmidt, The First Poets brings to life for the general reader the great Greek poets who gave our poetic tradition its first bearings and whose works have had an enduring influence on our literature and our imagination.

Starting with the legendary and possibly mythical Orpheus and with Homer, Schmidt conjures a host of our literary forebears. From Hipponax, “the dirty old man of poetry,” to Theocritus, the father of pastoral; from Sappho, who threw herself from a cliff for love, to Hesiod, who claimed a visit from the Muses–the stories in The First Poets masterfully merge fact and conjecture into animated and compelling portraits of these ancestors of our culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A flute is a flute unless, in the works of Orpheus, Hesiod or Sappho, it was first an aulos, in which case "flute" is a poorly translated name for a reed instrument akin to our modern day oboe. Why the slip? No one knows, but this biographic compendium of 23 ancient Greek poets goes a long way toward curbing such mistakes by offering itself as a sort of reference tool with which readers-at-large can take up the once core educational practice of reading the first poets. Poet and critic Schmidt refers to his project as "protestant" because it argues that any reader can access the ancient texts in his or her own vernacular English, and without a doctorate in ancient literatures. By way of help, Schmidt complements his hints on flutes with highly readable surveys of the critical land surrounding his subjects-his discussion of the function of lyric poetry for the ancient Greeks is one brilliant example. But the book's unique value lies in its carefully crafted attention to the concerns of contemporary fans of English-language poetry. For every Pindar of Thebes or Hipponas of Ephesus, there are references to modernist luminaries such as Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle. A chapter on Homer includes lines penned by Keats. These more familiar names are cited not as authorities on ancient poetry but as careful readers or selfless translators, each bent over their copies of the ancient texts trying to figure out the important details, like what did Sappho mean when she used the first-person pronoun-did she really mean herself? The effect is a careful threading of old and not-so-old into a single community of readers, one into which this fine book does much to welcome us.
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Review

“Exhilarating. . . . It’s hard to be temperate about Michael Schmidt’s loving, informed and deeply engaging survey. . . . It would be difficult to imagine a better introduction to its subject.”
–The Washington Post

“Exhilarating . . . a learned feast. . . . Schmidt knows and loves poetry and has a marvelous feel for it.” –Newsday

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (March 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375725253
• ISBN-13: 978-0375725258
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,322,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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