On a hard rock in the past, overlooking a wonderful blue sea with the hot sun shining down, somebody writes a love poem and puts it to sea in an old bottle. Centuries later, with the same sun shining, someone else picks up the bottle in a dark bar and drinks the contents. ‘Bring back the future’, shouts a cloud in the sky. It is from the central predicaments staed in this anecdote that this book springs. Employing a translation system known as ‘allusive referential’ McCaffery invents a way of avoiding the strictures of classical translation. Developing all the suggestions and connotations of Sappho’s words and phrases, new texts are produced which are at the same time vital re-readings of the originals. Irreverent, yet executed in a spirit of love and respect, Intimate Distortions curves gracefully (and occasionally naughtily) away from the strict linear dictates of authorized translation to produce poems of delightful misprision.