Epistles of Horace

When David Ferry's translation of The Odes of Horace appeared in 1997, Bernard Knox, writing in The New York Review of Books, called it "a Horace for our times." Now Ferry has translated Horace's two books of Epistles, in which he perfected his dazzling conversational verse medium, speaking with directness, wit, & urgency, to young writers, to friends, to his patron Maecenas, to the Emperor Augustus himself. It is the voice of a free man, talking about how to get along in a Roman world full of temptations, opportunities, & contingencies with one's integrity intact. His world, so unlike our own & yet so like it, comes to life in these poems. And there are also the poems--the famous "Art of Poetry" & others--about the task & responsibilities of the writer: truth to the demands of one's medium, fearless clearsighted self-knowledge, & unillusioned, uncynical realism, joy-fully recognizing the world for what it is.Ferry, David is the author of 'Epistles of Horace' with ISBN 9780374148560 and ISBN 0374148562.