The Odes of Horace (ISBN 0374224250)

Amazon.com Review:
David Ferry's The Odes of Horace represents the first truly distinguished translation of the complete odes into the American idiom. The translator has managed to retain the poet's moral tone while purging any taint of sententiousness. How? By recasting the structure of "Carpe Diem," for example, he gives this familiar poem a power one would have not thought possible. Ferry even manages a Latin-English rhyme at the end, by shifting the position of the addressee's name: "Leuconoe-- / Hold on to the day." Ferry's Horace is always a specific personality, with his own identity, background, and attitude. Yet he is also a conduit of history. Turning to "Delicta maiorum immeritus lues..." (which Ferry straightforwardly calls "To the Romans"), we are plunged into a devastating meditation on the imperium. At this point, of course, it's commonplace to point out similarities between the American empire and that of ancient Rome. But this translation gives us a feeling for just how contemporary Horace really is. The best example would probably be "To Dellius": Dellius, don't be Too unrestrainedly joyful in good fortune. You are going to die. It doesn't matter at all whether you spend Your days and nights in sorrow, Or, on the other hand, in holiday pleasure. Drinking Falernian wine Of an excellent vintage year, on the river bank. It helps to know that the historical Dellius was exiled in Egypt at the time, making those Italian vintages strictly off-limits to him. What's more, he was a double or perhaps triple agent, which gives him an additional Cold War coloration. In any case, the allusiveness of the odes--and the taut, bone-dry English of Ferry's translation--should gain Horace a legion or so of new readers. --Mark Rudman

I wanted to like this but . . .:
I wanted to like this translation after all the nice things that D.S. Carne-Ross said about it in the useful and enjoyable "Horace in English." But this is a translation that is made more for image-by-image accuracy than for the ear. Often you read Ferry describing the right word rather than saying it. (Phrases like "too unrestrainedly joyful in good fortune" read like a dictionary entries.) In the difficult-to-render i.5 he ends up phrasing things like Yoda - "Hapless are they enamored of that beauty." Too academic are they who write as this one.

Middle of the road translation:
I bought this at the same time as Michie's translation and prefer the latter. Ferry does a decent job of capturing the simplest level of the poems readably and easily, but the subtlety and deeper levels of the originals seem to be missing. For someone wanting the Latin texts, however, this book might be a good buy, since the poems are attractively presented, each starting on a fresh page, in a pleasant typeface.

Uncommon Poems of the Commonplace:
No doubt that a command of Greek and Roman mythology adds immeasurably to the enjoyment of Horace's Odes but in many cases the context explains the reference. Horace's commonplace themes are deeply imbedded in our culture and he illuminates them with uncommon insight and poetry: love is cruel, seize the day, greed wants more, death equalizes, happy the one who wants nothing, don't be beguiled by past success, luck changes, accept your place, beauty fades, death comes, money can't buy peace, a friend is our other half. I love Horace the man, the Odes and the Ferry translation which brings a contemporary idiom to the poems without seeming contrived.

There IS a better translation of Horace out there. . .:
David Ferry's translation is simply undeservedly popular and is absolutely NOT the best Horace in English currently in print! I defy anyone to find Ferry's Horace superior to the wonderfully readable translation done recently by Sidney Alexander and published in Princeton University Press's Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation. Richard Howard, translator extraordinaire himself, has written a short Preface for the volume, in which he compares a passage from Alexander's work to other versions of the same passage done by Pound, Michie, and Burton Raffel, and Howard justly judges that Alexander's is the "far superior text." Ferry's language is too often simply muddled, the syntax unclear. Do yourself a great favor, buy the Sidney Alexander translation, and you'll be rewarded with a vastly more enjoyable reading experience!

IMPORTANT NOTE - the reviews below refer to a different book:
The reviews below refer to David Ferry's translation of Horace's Odes, NOT to Jeffrey Kaimowitz's.