Old Time Love Song Magic is two books in one. The first collects Andrew Schelling’s translations of the thirty-odd existing poems by Vidyā, who may have been the earliest woman to write poetry in Sanskrit. The second book draws on the insights and knowledge gained through that process.

"This tantalizing compendium of poetry with commentaries, generously offered by poet Andrew Schelling, arrives at a crucial moment. It is a shimmering reminder, a goad, a puja, a scent of blue lotus, a scold with torrents of rain, a cucumber garden, and crystalline observation that indeed 'every kalpa ends in collapse.' Vidyā—the magnificent wise passionate Sappho of India—soars thru 21st century neurotic mind with deft wit, fierce seduction, ordinary and sublime magic. As if the clouds suddenly lifted to reveal a gnosis and antidote to the Kali Yuga’s intensifying samsara and monstrous war on human imagination! As if love and poetry had abruptly fled a toxic planet of woe—yet heard our call. These elegantly honed translations and their codas of scholarship (with meters: the doe, tiger’s play, girl with a garland) bring us back to life. 'Friend,/ why doesn’t this heart / break into a hundred/ brittle shards?' Vidyā’s voice answers, It does, and reveals the cosmic runes and mirrors of poetry."
—Anne Waldman