Post date: Sep 4, 2016 4:32:41 PM
I found myself feeling very weird as I read some of the poetry excerpts we have left from Sappho. I have to admit that she was not the not the best poet I had ever read and used language in ways similar to how I have seen other poets use it. However, this does not explain why I was so drawn into all of her words. Most other poets and artists I know of, I could tell you snippets of their lives and explain how that influenced their viewpoint. I have read of soldiers fighting in wars and artists like van Gogh turning pain into beauty but then I realized that I do not know anything about Sappho nor can I really learn all that much more. I know when she lived but nothing really of her life and her mindset. That is when I realized why I am so drawn to her; I do not have a story for her but I really want to learn something from her writing.
I loved how Sappho's writing gives us pieces into her head but more often than not it gives me more questions than answers. In her poem on old age, she mentioned Tithonus like we should just know his importance. This is like me making a reference to the Taylor Swift/Kanye ongoing feud (not exactly I know) and just expecting people to know what I am talking about because it is so ingrained in my generation's culture. Then there is how her quips on old age were funny yet stung a little when I thought about how it must have felt to live like that. There was a lot of truth and rawness in her writing that I really enjoyed. This also made me think that we share a similar humor because she referred to people younger than her as children and I do that a lot with people younger than me, like freshmen. She also provides these beautiful little moments with her words like "my tongue broken", "you cooled my mind that burned with longing", and "do I still yearn for my virginity?". There are these moments that I want to know so much more about but know I never will. This mix of rawness and mystery draws me into her writing and makes me fascinated about her.