Now, I have to bring up the fact that she was a woman. I'm all for uplifting any publications written by females. However, you have to think that in Ancient Greece, men didn't really give women a chance to shine. Many ancient men, like the famous Plato and Strabo, praised Sappho and her works. Would they have been shocked that a woman was so adept at poetry that they automatically put her on a pedestal with other famous females (the Muses)? Men nowadays are known for not speaking of emotions, maybe there was a similar theme back then. Men couldn't put emotions into words, so maybe when they read a poem that did, they were immediately enamored. 

I do agree that some of the fragments are incredibly moving. I think there's so much romance in the way Sappho approaches everything, that it just tugs on the heartstrings. What I have to wonder though is if the mystery surrounding this woman adds to the draw towards her works. Dinitia Smith wrote that "Her life is a mystery and so is her work because of its incompleteness." I think there's an allure in creating your own endings and drawing up your own stories as to what is happening in the poem. What little we have left of her voice is so incredibly interesting, that many different narratives can be spun when you read what remains of her works. 

As Martin West said, "It is difficult to judge [Sappho] for ourselves when so little of her work remains." I wish her poems had stayed whole, she seems absolutely fantastic. Her work seems like the genre I like, heart-wrenching romance and all about womanhood.