stung with love poems and fragments of sappho

This is a new translation of her surviving poetry.įor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. The surviving texts consist of a lamentably small and fragmented body of lyric poetry among them poems of invocation, desire, spite, celebration, resignation and remembrance that nevertheless enables us to hear the living voice of the poet Plato called the tenth Muse. Little remains today of her writings, which are said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria some 500 years after her death. I’ve been writing my own poetry recently (which does not resemble Sappho in the slightest, unfortunately) and have been thinking about trying to get some of it published.More or less 150 years after Homer's Iliad, Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos, west off the coast of what is present Turkey. What do you think? Is the latter too short? Apparently, we’ve also got to memorize one of her poems. Sappho’s Stung with Love is a required read for my Cultural Foundations I Class. I think the most effective poetry is the shortest (perhaps because of my attention span, but also because of its clarity). Who doesn’t want to leave a legacy after death? Who hopes to fade from the earth, forever forgotten and lost in time? No one. Take, for example, the last poem I quoted, beginning with “I declare.” Four lines, yet incredibly powerful and expressing a definite thought. Now, obviously these poems are recovered - we’ve lost 90% of her work - but that which remains is intriguing and beautifully constructed. Upheld by other prominent Greeks as the “10th Muse,” Sappho earns her place amongst the heavy hitters and is one of the few influential women of her time. Sappho is definitely an interesting poet. “A hillside hyacinth shepherds treaded flat,Ī red bloom in the dust - it is like that,”. She touches also on mythology, family, and hatred of her rival, Andromeda.Īs now - no, never quite like this,”. In this anthology, Sappho comments on the nature of love, which she likens to a sting, or an affliction.

Stung with Love is a collection of the poetry of Sappho. Sappho is an Ancient Greek poet whose work survives only in fragments. Some poetry for the first time on this blog (I believe - I can’t go back and check every single post). Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments by Sappho

Stung with love poems and fragments of sappho