Sappho

I've been reading Sappho.

I've wanted to for a long time now--or maybe not that long a time, maybe it's only been a few weeks or a month or something, but with my impatience these days it seems like forever.  I've wanted to read her ever since my brother remembered who he'd been thinking of, that's how long I've been wanting to read Sappho.

My brother and I go to bookstores and bookstore cafes a lot; we both love coffee, and we both love books.  Well, actually, he loves coffee and tea and all that stuff, and I just love the coffee and tea lattes, and sometimes just plain tea.  And also he tends toward modern adult literature much of the time, and I tend toward children's literature, especially fantasy.  But we meet a lot on the classics (in that, we've both read some of them and want to read more) and we're always open for general discussion on any kind of books or literature, any kind at all.  SO, to wrap this story up, one time in Barnes & Noble he was trying to recall an ancient female poet.  I told him I didn't know (yes, it's true, I didn't know), and the matter dropped with a few shrugs of the shoulders.  But a week or so later we were in Borders, and he happened to mention that, oh yeah, he remembered who that poet was he'd been trying to think of--Sappho.  And we looked for a copy of her poems, since we were right in a bookstore after all, but couldn't find one.

And that is when I decided I wanted to read Sappho.

I looked her up online shortly thereafter.  I'm ashamed to say that I didn't know much about her.  Okay, fine, all I pretty much knew was that her name sounded familiar.  I'm not sure if I even knew she was a poet, or a woman, of if she was real (you know, she could have been some Greek mythological figure or something).  Yeah.  I disgust me, too.  But at least one of the reasons I didn't know much about her (besides the fact that my literary education is a bit shoddy) is that no one knows much about Sappho.  Apparently we only know a few brief facts about her, and the rest is highly debatable.  She was born around 630 B.C.E., she was from the island of Lesbos, and she was most likely bi-sexual.  She might have been married.  She might have had a daughter.  And her poetry was loved and celebrated by many, but despised by religious figures, and so most of her work has not survived.  It has been burned to cinders by Crusaders and torn into strips for mummy wrappings; it has been allowed to deteriorate until we have nothing left but two seeimingly intact poems amidst mostly fragments of verse that have a strange and alluring beauty all their own.

I think I might love Sappho.

I looked for her in Half Price Books recently and bought a copy of Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho, translated by Willis Barnstone--who drives me up a wall.  Barnstone, not Sappho.  I know, this is the person who barely knew Sappho existed a few months ago, criticizing one of her translators.  But his introduction is just so pompous and wordy and "Look at me, look at what metaphors I can create!" and--

No.  No.  I will not go off on a rant about translators.  This is about Sappho.

Ahem.

So I am about halfway through the book, and here are some of my favorite lines/verses so far, from her untitled poems and fragments:

Icy water babbles through apple branches
and roses leave shadow on the ground
and bright shaking leaves pour down
profound sleep.

*     *     *

Flaming summer
charms the earth with its own fluting,
and under leaves
the cicada scrapes its tiny wings together
and incessantly
pours out full shrill song

*     *     *

Love shook my heart like wind
on a mountain punishing oak trees.

*     *     *

and how there was no
holy shrine
where we were absent,

no grove
no dance
no sound

*     *     *

A deed
your lovely face

if not, winter
and no pain

*     *     *

Now she shines among Lydian women
as after sunset
the rosy-fingered moon

surpasses all the stars, and her light reaches
equally across the salt sea
and over meadows steeped in flowers.

*     *     *

Sigh.  Beautiful.  And then I wrote this, poor poem as it is, about Sappho's line fragment "if not, winter."  Seems a shame to put it in a post with snippets of Sappho, but--oh well.  Here it is--


For Sappho


If not, winter

if not—

and though
it speaks it seems
of sorrow
it sounds
like bells

If not—

if not,

winter
it seems

will come down
in fallen flight,
roses close
on needled green

snow will awaken
the night

Fire
will not touch it
April
will not take it
it will
cool
it will
freeze

ice will crust over
your bones

but it’s all right

you’ll breathe
frost
and exhale
legacy
through your
paling
crystal mouth


*     *     *

And now, good night.