Out of the Unexpected: poems with Sappho
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Graduation Year
2023
Writing Track
Poetry
Degree
Master of Arts
Program
Creative Writing
Program Director
Judy Halebsky, PhD
First Reader
Judy Halebsky, PhD
Second Reader
Judy Halebsky, PhD
Description
Poets have a long tradition of correspondence with one another through the epistolary, various traditional forms such as the ode or sonnet and often use a given line as inspiration. This culminating collection of poems is no exception. Most of the poems are written with the remaining fragments of the ancient Greek poet Sappho as titles, a first or last line, and more often are placed within and throughout the poems. The fragments are italicized to both celebrate and enhance the reading of Sappho.
Sappho was born in 630 BC in Greece. From her nine books only one poem in its entirety remains. The rest are fragments that have been discovered in the mouths of mummified crocodile, persons, and were used to heat water when the Romans invaded Greece. An ancient garbage heap in Egypt revealed a treasure trove of her work in the late 1890’s inspiring the Victorian poets thereafter.
Sappho’s mystery is the negative space that continues to intoxicate her readers and has led to countless translations, summations, or even attempts to “finish” her poems. Many scholars continue to argue over her role, position and value; for example, she was a teacher but to what degree? Regardless of who and what Sappho was she is often limited to a lesbian poetess, since she did write poems about women. This would not have been unusual in a time where vases depicted lovers in various positions. And yet Sappho, as many of us today, fulfilled multiple roles from a player of the Lyre to a mother, a daughter, a wife, a lover, a teacher, a sister. It is in this vein that the thesis project was co-created with her fragments in and throughout poems that speak to longing to be known and found, that explore the lost stories of women both ancient and modern, much as Greece is today. A country that lives and thrives in the shadows of ancient remains of societies, reveals evidence of past peoples and influences that led me to further ponder ideas of who and what parts of our lives have also remained untold, hidden or even silenced. The fragments of Sappho served as departure and a return, as a kind of scaffolding that influenced, shaped and inspired these pages and would have otherwise not been possible.