A: That's easy: Sappho, Elizabeth Bishop and um, hold on, gimme time, and ...
Q: Interesting.
A: Yeah, thanks, sure. Don't feign sincerity and interest with me
Q: You're right. Sorry.
A: And James Joyce and Annie Dillard. And Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton and Nora Ephron, too, because I so wish they hadn't died. And Mitch Hedberg, because he was so funny and so sweet, and I so wish he hadn't died.
Q: The question was three writers.
A: I know. I changed it.
Q: You can't do that.
A: Yes I can. I'm the one writing the questions, remember?
Q: Oh, right. Carry on then.
A: I shall. Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Keats. And Sappho gets to bring her girlfriends, including Erica Jong.
Q: Girlfriends?
A: Yes. I believe she invented the word, in the sense that women use it today, as in "Girls Night Out," and "The Five Girlfriends Every Woman Must Have ..." It's attested in this quotation, numbered 160 by Lobel-Page. It's basically a usage gloss by the writer Athenaios, who says
And now freeborn women and virgins call their intimate friends *hetairai* as Sappho does in this passage:Athenaios then quotes Sappho, which I translate this way ...
Q: Hold on, *You* translate? Like from Greek?
A: Yes, from Greek. Yes I do. Sappho wrote in the dialect known as Aeolic. The translating of her barely surviving ouevre is a big part currently of my life's work. Anyway, I translate the fragment this way:
Of these things now, for my girlfriends dear, of delight beautifully I shall sing.
Q: Barnstone didn't do it that way.
A: No, he didn't. But I did. My rendering is more like Anne Carson (2002). And it follows the word order a bit more closely. Always a hazard because it strains the limits of English syntax, which relies more on word order than does Greek, an inflected language.
Q: OK. But back to your guest list. So it's a party, then.
A: Yes it is, yes it is. But if Joyce gets too plastered, I'm cuttin' him off.
Q: Your list has more women than men. Why?
A: Easy: I like women more than men.
Q: I see.
A: Hey! Warned you about faking. Anyways, I included Joyce, despite my concern that he might be a bit too abrasive, too unmodernly un-reconstructed for the 21st century. Mitch, however, I'd expect to be a perfect polite unthreatening non-creepy gentleman, and that all the women at the table would love him, as I do.
Q: Wait. You *love* Mitch Hedberg?
A: Yes, I do.
Q: But, he's like, a guy.
A: So?
Q: What about Joyce?
A: Love only his work.
Q: Any other loves to profess?
A: Certainly. Thanks for asking.
Q: Hey! Self-congratulating, are we?
A: You're right. So, carrying on: I love Sappho and all her girlfriends, and Ms Bishop and Ms Dillard. Don't know Ms Plath and Ms Sexton well enough, so not sure yet. But knowing me, as the evening concludes and everyone gathers coats and belongings and checks purses to make sure they have cab fare, plus tip, back to the afterlife, I'd be gushing to both of them: I love you.
Q: Well then, let's end it here.
A: No, let's not. We'll keep it going, and post another day.
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