The Swan of the well by Titia Brongersma

Miller, Eric

"The first complete English translation of the work of the brilliant seventeeth-century Frisian poet Titia Brongersma. Acclaimed as Sappho reborn by the circle of humanist intellectuals centred around Groningen University in the Netherlands, the Frisian poet Titia Brongersma published her only book, The Swan of the Well, in 1686. This is the first full translation of Brongersma's extant work. An artist as versatile, eloquent, and daring as her English contemporary Aphra Behn, Brongersma dedicated more than thirty impassioned poems to her beloved, Elisabeth Joly, and experimented with pastoral verse in West Frisian. Famed, too, for her part in a pioneering excavation at the ancient monument in Borger, Brongersma celebrated this experience in strong verse. Evoking Ovid, Petrarch, Dutch theatre, and French opera, the poet brought to life a lost world of gifted, surprising, charming women...