Synopses & Reviews
Ovid's epic poem—whose theme of change has resonated throughout the ages—is one of the most important texts of Western imagination, an inspiration from Dante's times to the present day, when writers such as Salman Rushdie and Italo Calvino have found a living source in Ovid's work. Charles Martin combines a close fidelity to Ovid's text with verse that catches the speed and liveliness of the original. Martin's Metamorphoses will be the translation of choice for contemporary readers in English. This volume also includes endnotes and a glossary of people, places, and personifications. "Martin's complete text is clearly something to look forward to with high expectations."—Bernard Knox, The New York Review of Books "A reader who wants to understand Ovid's poem as a whole, as well as to learn its many famous stories, will find Mr. Martin's clarity and tact invaluable."—The New York Sun "Smoothly readable, accurate, charming, subtle yet clear....A lucidly fluent version of this most flowing of poems."—Richard Wilbur
Review
"This translation of the is all that one could wish." Richard Wilbur
Review
"Among the accomplished translations of Ovid in our day, this version of by Charles Martin--elegant, witty and exuberant by turns, and epic in its span from the creation of the world to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar--should now lay claim to its own distinguished ground." Robert Fagles
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"Charles Martin's new translation of the , the latest in a 500-year-old tradition, both gives us an Ovid for our times and reminds us that in our times Ovid is everywhere." The Hudson Review
Review
"[Martin] has caught Ovid's sly ironies, his un-Virgilian briskness, and his own kind of tough-minded pathos, and has created a completely convincing poetic voice. The translation is a marvel." Rosanna Warren
Review
"I read right through this translation and so exhilarated was the handling of movement and metaphor throughout that when I finished I wanted to start over.... Charles Martin is to be congratulated for a singular achievement." William Jay Smith
Review
"Ever since Horace Gregory published his translation of in 1958, it hasn't been bettered--until now. Charles Martin's muscular version in blank verse is remarkably lively and modern, the Ovid for our time." Robert Phillips
Synopsis
Ovid's epic poem--whose theme of change has resonated throughout the ages--is one of the most important texts of Western imagination, an inspiration from Dante's times to the present day, when writers such as Salman Rushdie and Italo Calvino have found a living source in Ovid's work. Charles Martin combines a close fidelity to Ovid's text with verse that catches the speed and liveliness of the original. Martin's will be the translation of choice for contemporary readers in English. This volume also includes endnotes and a glossary of people, places, and personifications.
Synopsis
"A version that has been long awaited, and likely to become the new standard."--Michael Dirda,
About the Author
Charles Martin is Professor of English Emeritus at Queensborough Community College at the City University of New York. Martin's fourth book of poems, Starting from Sleep: New and Selected Poems was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, as were two previous volumes, What Darkness Proposes and Steal the Bacon. He is the translator of the widely acclaimed The Poems of Catullus and the author of a critical study of Catullus. His translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses won the 2004 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. He lives in Syracuse, New York.