Gaius Valerius Catullus' poetry has endured for 2,000 years and still has the power to shock and move readers (do an Internet search for "Catullus 16" to get a sense of the modern, powerful and vulgar work). While his late Republican Rome (circa 50s BCE) contemporaries Julius Caesar, Pompey and Mark Antony engaged in politics and war, the poet engaged with his art and his tumultuous love affair with the wife of a powerful politician. Of her, Catullus writes, "Now I have got to know you. So even if I burn more deeply/ You are still much cheaper and less significant to me./ How can that be, you say? Because such a wound compels a lover/ To love more, but to like less."
Using the poem traditionally known as "Catullus 64"--what historian Daisy Dunn refers to as "the bedspread poem"--as a scaffold, she explores the life and motivations of the poet. Dunn also presents crisp, fresh translations of many additional poems, never shirking from the scathing vulgarity that helped to establish Catullus' reputation and continually presents challenges to more prudish translators. It is as a translator and critic that Dunn particularly impresses; this book coincides with publication of Dunn's translation of Catullus' full corpus.
While biographical and contextual elements are somewhat scant and basic familiarity with the crisis of the late Republic is assumed, Catullus' Bedspread serves as an excellent introduction to a fabulous, scurrilous poet, a poet who reminds modern readers how little humans have changed in the intervening millennia. --Evan M. Anderson, collection development librarian, Kirkendall Public Library, Ankeny, Iowa.