Wild Friday at Poets United

Welcome to the first Wild Friday at Poets United! Starting today, we will be dedicating the second Friday of the month to topics touched by poetry  — it can be about a particular poem, a poetry book or something that is happening in the poetry world. 

The second Fridays will be wild! I hope to pleasantly surprise you with something that we all will enjoy doing together. On that note let us dive into today's prompt:  

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In a world dominated by men, it was rare to see a woman in ancient times to wield such power in writing. Sappho's songs were regarded as outstanding, so revered was she that the people of those times referred to her as the "Tenth Muse," and her songs were passed down over centuries inspiring generations of Poets, none of whom managed to replicate her command of metre and sensual artistry.

So, where did Sappho come from? Her estimated birth date places her sometime after the composition and transmission of the works of the Homeric Poets, which told stories of the Trojan War and are preserved in the epics known as the 'Iliad,' and the 'Odyssey.' 

In my eyes he matches the gods 

In my eyes he matches the gods, that man who

sits there facing you--any man whatever--

listening from close by to the sweetness of your

          voice as you talk, the

sweetness of your laughter: yes, that--I swear it--

sets the heart to shaking inside my breast, since

once I look at you for a moment, I can't

          speak any longer,

but my tongue breaks down, and then all at once a

subtle fire races inside my skin, my

eyes can't see a thing and a whirring whistle

          thrums at my hearing,

cold sweat covers me and a trembling takes

a hold of me all over: I'm greener than the

grass is and appear to myself to be little

          short of dying.

But all must be endured, since even a poor [

When I first came across and read this poem I was blown away by the intensity of the emotions that adorned each and every word, placed carefully and with such precision so as to capture the reader's attention. 

Sappho's poem puts me in the mind of love, eros and jealousy. The poem as we have it is apparently incomplete as there is the beginning of an additional line at the end ("But all must be endured... ") Most translators have ignored this fragment and concluded with the previous line, but a few modern ones include it.

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Which brings me to question: what could have been the conclusion? What more could have been said? The fact that the poem is incomplete leaves much to be contemplated and adds a certain level of mystery. I remember reading and re-reading this poem and each time marveling at the possibility of there having been at least one more stanza in completing it. 

So, for our first Wild Friday at Poets United, I invite you to write poetry and offer the following two options:

1) Find a poem which is also incomplete and write a response poem that works like an ending for your choice.

                                                       

2) Or if you don't feel like finding a different poem then use Sappho's.

Add the direct link to your poem to Mr Linky. Remember to visit others and to comment on their work. I look forward to reading what you all come up with. Have fun!

The Living Dead

~ Honouring our poetic ancestors ~

Selections from Sappho
(c. 630 – c. 570 BC)

Supreme Sight on the Black Earth

Some say cavalry and others claim
infantry or a fleet of long oars
is the supreme sight on the black earth
              I say it is

the one you love. And easily proved.
Didn't Helen, who far surpassed
all in beauty, desert the best of men
              her husband and king

and sail off to Troy and forget
her daughter and dear parents? Merely
love's gaze made her bend
              and led her

from her path.
These tales
remind me now of Anaktoria
              who is gone.

And I would rather see her supple step
and motion of light on her face
than chariots of the Lydians or ranks
              of foot soldiers in bronze.

Now this is impossible
yet among the living I pray for a share

unexpectedly.


Seizure

To me he seems equal to the gods,
the man who sits facing you
and hears you speak
        softly and laugh

in a sweet echo that jolts
the heart in my ribs. Now
when I look at you a moment
         my voice is empty

and can say nothing as my tongue
cracks and slender fire races
under my skin. My eyes are dead
         to light, my ears

pound, and sweat pours over me.
I convulse, greener than grass
and feel my mind slip as I go
         close to death.

Yet I must suffer, even poor


Behind a Laurel Tree

You lay in wait
behind a laurel tree

and everything
was sweeter

women
wandering

I barely heard
darling soul

such as I now am
you came

beautiful
in your garments

These poems are all from this book which I found in my local library. (My photo shows the title page.) I like these translations better than others I've seen. The Greek is also given, but as I never learned that language I can't tell how well the poems have been translated. However we are told in the Introduction that music was preferred over faithfulness to the most literal meaning – a choice I think most poets would approve.

Wikipedia tells us that, although she used a number of metrical forms in her poetry, she gave her name to the Sapphic stanza, albeit it is not certain that she invented it as it was used by other poets of her time too. This is how it goes:

The form is two hendecasyllabic verses, and a third verse beginning the same way and continuing with five additional syllables (given as the stanza's fourth verse in ancient and modern editions, and known as the Adonic or adonean line).

Using "-" for a long syllable, "u" for a short and "x" for an "anceps" (or free syllable), and displaying the Adonic as a fourth line:

- u -  x  - u u -   u - -
- u -  x  - u u -   u - -
- u -  x  - u u -   u - -
- u u - u

Apparently it was difficult, in the Greek, to keep to this form and still create a smooth flow of language, yet (we are told) that was exactly where Sappho excelled.

I'm sure we've all heard of Sappho and know at least a little about her. Don't feel ignorant if you don't know much; even her Wikipedia entry  gives only a brief account of her life and work. In fact, although we know from ancient sources that she was a famous lyric poet of her time, only fragments of the poetry have survived and very little is known about her life.

She lived on the island of Lesbos, from which we get the word lesbian. She wrote love poems about both men and women, but those which survive were more often, and more intensely, about women. This translator, in his extensive and scholarly Introduction, rejects the attempts by many writers in earlier centuries to explain away her sexuality by supposing that she was the head of a priestess cult and that the passionate texts were symbolic. Instead, he asks us to look at the poems themselves to discern their meaning.

She certainly does address some poems to the goddess Aphrodite, in which she sounds like a worshipper. I don't find this surprising in a poet who celebrated love and beauty. Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty, and their gods were real to the people of ancient Greece. There are also some poems to Eros, another god of romantic love. And she has many poems which are not addressed to deities but clearly refer to human loves. How beautifully they stand the test of time!

Many of us around the world are affected at this time by disastrous wars and floods. I thought it might be nice to escape, if only for a few moments, into some beautiful poems about love.

Material shared in 'The Living Dead' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, where applicable (older poems may be out of copyright).

The image of the bust of Sappho, above, is in the Public Domain. The bust is a Roman copy of a Greek original of the 5th century BC.