Daughters of Sappho: Contemporary Greek Women Poets [first edition]

Daughters of Sappho is an anthology of twenty-five contemporary Greek women poets, represented by some of their best poems in new translations by Rae Dalven. Presenting the poets in chronological order and providing full biographical and bibliographical accounts of them, this collection shows the gradual development of Greek women's verse from sentimental romanticism to various forms of modernism and post-modernism.In the first two decades of this century, poetry was identified with male literature, and Greek women poets were discriminated against by this patriarchal society. Maria Polydhouri (1902-30) wrote romantic and erotic poetry because love was the only subject acceptable for women. She is included in this anthology because she was the first contemporary Greek woman poet to gain prominence beyond the borders of Greece. The thirties, on the other hand, were a period of social fragmentation and political chaos, and a period of unexpected change in poetry, inspired by George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis. Seferis, the most distinguished poet of the period, bound his classical heritage to the tragic fate of his own generation in demotic speech and free verse. It was also the time when the literary magazine Nea Grammata gave support to the new tendencies in poetry.