Ovid is really talented at expressing the same sentiment in a million (I’m being hyperbolic, of course) different ways.

I came across this book in a used bookstore on Chincoteague and started it on the drive home, reading good bits out loud to my family.

This book brought to life the early Roman Empire in a way that very few books I've ever read have. No historical fiction can compete with the surprises an original source can offer. It helps when your source is a phenomenal writer in his own right, as Ovid was. I liked this translation, too.

Ovid was exiled from Rome by Caesar under mysterious circumstances. The official reason had to do with Ovid's racy book, but more likely it was his association with a group of traitors. Ovid spent the rest of his life on the edge of the Black Sea, writing laments and pleas to return. He was not allowed to go home. The locals were somewhat bemused by his continued emperor worship: how's that working out for you...?

I emphatically do not like this translation - come on, Arthur Leslie Wheeler, do better - but the poetry itself is good. Read for my displacement class, in which we're looking closely at Tristia 1.3.
For someone who doesn't want to dedicate the time needed to reading it, though, the collection can be summed up as this: 'I'm so sad, and it's cold here, and pretty please ask Augustus to let me come back to Rome because the Getae don't speak Latin and they think I'm weird. Also I miss my wife.'