Well, perhaps, & I'm certainly not against the powerful
(re)presentation of emotion, Judy, but of course I only know Sappho
through modern(ist) translations, such as Mary Barnard's or more
recently, Anne Carson's. So, it's also the formal qualities of these
that attract me as a writer. Putting, as I did when younger, the
Barnard (lead there by Pound) book beside Phyllis Webb's Naked Poems.
Okay, both implied stories, but by indirection.
Doug
On 22-Sep-08, at 5:49 PM, Judy Prince wrote:
> 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
Douglas Barbour
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