Exactly, Doug. All that you've written here. And most apt, your saying
it's p'raps poetic irony that you can't and won't know Sappho's complete
poems.
Wanted to add that, in poems, the 'varying amounts of itself' [of
narration], are blended with varying amounts of 'description', as well as
explication [explaining] and argumentation/persuasion.
A provocative, creative book I used for teaching beginning level college
research writing, was titled _Everything's An Argument_. I needed little
convincing, found m'sel' fascinated by the mirror held to prose forms
illuminated by 'argumentation/persuasion'.
Back to Sappho for a bit. She tended to 'address' a person---not a common
thing for poets-modern---as well as to give full voice to an 'other'. I
view her poemlets as mini-plays. They are, thence, more engaging than those
poems that don't use dramatic techniques. She's driven to have us _know_
her, her deepest feelings, failings, desperations. To win us over to her,
to side with her. Poetry as argumentation/persuasion, nah?
Sappho's 'lyricism' comes, as well, from her work's strong element of the
'confessional'---and it's Way Over The Top. Strikes me that what brings
hordes of male persons into the opera houses [I had always wondered why more
males attended than females] is what entices them about Sappho's poetry: In
Your Face Emoting. A confession: I weep far more wrenchingly and
replicatedly when I hear Jessye Norman's 1984 French tv singing of 'Dove
Sono' from Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro", than when I read the most poignant
poetry.
Best,
Judy
2008/9/22 Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
> An intriguing thought. The one complete Sappho poem we have is a short
> narrative, I guess, maybe. But the fragments are intensely 'lyrical' in a
> more modern sense, & perhaps one kind of poet finds inspiration in their
> very fragmented state, while another kind seeks what the longer narrative
> forms allow.
>
> I tend to be in the former category, & Sappho is definitely one of my
> muses, but only because I cant & dont know her work in its complete form. A
> poetic irony perhaps...
>
> Doug
> On 22-Sep-08, at 5:36 AM, Judy Prince wrote:
>
> I feel that the word
>> 'narration' applies to most un-ancient poetry, in varying amounts of
>> itself.
>>
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>
> Latest books:
> Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> Wednesdays'
>
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>
> Language is sound as sense.
> Music is sound as sound.
>
> R. Murray Schafer
>
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