The book uses ample blank space and brackets to signify what’s missing, creating symbolic space for Sappho’s lost words to fill. If Not, Winter made waves in the field of translation not only for its exquisite poetry but for how the book honors the poems’ fragmentary condition. Autobiography of Red was published four years before If Not, Winter (2002), Carson’s translation of nearly all of the surviving fragments of Sappho’s lyric poetry. Through translation she transports and transforms. The section in Autobiography of Red titled “Red Meat: Fragments of Stesichoros,” in which Carson’s loose and inventive translation of Stesichoros’ surviving 'Geryoneis' fragments sets up the sprawling plot of Autobiography of Red: A Romance, embodies Carson’s unique approach to translation. This is why her works in translation continue to be revelatory she approaches translation with an artist’s eye. Carson is infatuated with the possibilities of fragments: how the void of those empty, missing spaces might be, or become, full with meaning. Anne Carson doesn’t think of fragments as a roadblock to translation neither does she simply take them for granted as an occupational hazard. While an apple with a chunk taken out of it is obviously still an apple, a poem with missing lines is a far more mysterious object, for there’s no telling how that missing piece would transform the whole. Any translator of ancient literature confronts the challenge of fragments: works that are only partially preserved.

Fragments of sappho anne carson