Who was Sappho?
Sappho was a female composer of lyric poetry from an aristocratic family on the Greek island of Lesbos in the eastern Aegean Sea, close to the shore of modern-day Turkey. She lived in the Archaic period, around the late 7th/early 6th century BC and is the only female poet from that period whose work survives to us today. She was highly regarded by other ancient poets, and was even referred to as 'the tenth Muse' - the Muses being the daughters of Zeus, the nine goddesses of the arts.

What is lyric poetry?
Lyric is not 'just' poetry, but music. It was composed to be sung to the accompaniment of a lyre (or other instruments) and sometimes performed with groups of dancers, too. I like to imagine Sappho as a modern singer-songwriter, the Taylor Swift of Archaic Lesbos: her lyrics, though often dealing with intensely private and personal emotions, were always intended to be heard by an audience. 

What did Sappho write about?
Love. Especially the love of women. Sappho sings about love in all its manifestations: the obsessive intensity of a new crush, the heartache of unrequited love, the yearning and longing for a lover now absent. She wrote hymns to the gods, too - especially Aphrodite, who at times seems to be her patron goddess, as Athene is to Odysseus - as well as songs to be performed at weddings and some scathing satire. We also have some fragments that might be considered biographical.

It's believed that Sappho composed nine books of lyric, approximately 10,000 lines in total. Only around 650 lines have survived to us, many of these collected in scraps of just a handful of lines or even just one or two words. 

How will this month's book club work?
I've spent the past few weeks debating with myself about the best way to approach poetry - and fragmentary poetry, at that - as a book club.

Instead of reading the fragments in numerical order - which can feel disorientating and isn't the order that Sappho herself composed or published them in, anyway - I've decided that we'll tackle Sappho's work thematically. The themes I've chosen are broad and somewhat arbitrarily imposed, and many fragments will fit into multiple categories, but I hope that the themes will give us a way into Sappho's work and help us to start talking about her lyrics. 

For each theme I will choose one 'main' fragment to discuss in depth (usually a longer/more complete fragment) and a selection of other fragments I think will help to highlight the theme further. Hopefully the edition/translation that you've chosen to read will use the same numbering system as mine (Rayor 2023 and Carson 2002) but I'll also include the first line of each fragment to help you locate it, if not!

Any questions, drop them in the comments below 💛

This poem takes the form of a traditional prayer to a god. First, the god is invoked, using the appropriate cult titles or epithets. Next, the god is reminded of past times they've been honoured or past times they have fulfilled prayers. Finally, the god is appealed to.

Fragment 5:
'O Kypris and Nereids, undamaged I pray you' (Carson)
'O divine sea-daughters of Nereus, let' (Rayor)

Fragment 17: 
'Close to me now as I pray,' (Carson)
'Near here... [let your delightful] festival' (Rayor)

Fragment 140:
'delicate Adonis is dying' (Carson)
'Delicate Adonis is dying, Aphrodite - what should we do?' (Rayor)

FRAGMENT 2:
']
here to me from Krete to this holy temple' (Carson)
'Come to me from Krete to this holy temple' (Rayor)

This poem is also written in the form of a prayer to a god, but the tone is very different from that of Fragment 1. Here, there are no military undertones and there is no sense of urgency: Sappho instead invites Aphrodite (and us, the audience) into a soft, sensual, and dreamlike world. 

Fragment 105A and 105B/105(a) and 105(c):
'as the sweetapple reddens on a high branch' (Carson)
'The sweet apple reddens on a high branch' (Rayor)

FRAGMENT 16:
'Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot' (Carson)
'Some say an army of horsemen, others' (Rayor)

The opening stanza of this poem uses a rhetorical device called a 'priamel', used in ancient times by philosophers to debate the nature of things. Here, Sappho uses the priamel to debate what the most beautiful thing could be. The second stanza uses a mythological paradigm - another rhetorical device - to demonstrate the argument she put forth in her priamel. 

Fragment 22/22(a) and 22(b):
']
]work
]face' (Carson)
'...[hurt]
...work, [far away from]...' (Rayor)

Fragment 88A and 88B/88
']
]in front
]toward' (Carson)
'...toward...
[impossible] to let loose...' (Rayor)

Fragment 102
'sweet mother I cannot work the loom' (Carson)
'Sweet mother, I cannot weave--' (Rayor)

FRAGMENT 94:
'I simply want to be dead.' (Carson)
'I simply wish to die.' (Rayor)

In this fragment, Sappho appears to use a young woman's (typically youthful melodramatic?) despair over her lover's absence as a teaching moment: she tells the woman, and us, that memories can bring pleasure as well as grief. 

Fragment 96
']Sardis
often turning her thoughts here' (Carson)
'...Sardis...
often holding her thoughts here.' (Rayor)

Fragment 147
'someone will remember us' (Carson)
'I say someone in another time will remember us.' (Rayor)

FRAGMENT 31:
'He seems to me equal to the gods that man' (Carson)
'To me it seems that man has the fortune' (Rayor)

This is (currently 😅) my favourite of Sappho's poems. She describes the way intense, obsessive desire for a woman has completely taken over all her senses and faculties: desire in this way is very much like a deadly disease. The incomplete ending leaves us, perhaps, on a note of hope. 

Fragment 26: 
']frequently
]for those' (Carson)
'How can someone not be hurt and hurt again,' (Rayor)

Fragment 48:
'you came and I was crazy for you' (Carson)
'You came and did [well]. I yearned for you,' (Rayor)

Fragment 130:
'Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me--' (Carson)
'Once again Love, that loosener of limbs,' (Rayor)

Use this forum as a place to talk about any other fragments of Sappho not previously mentioned. You can also talk about other themes you've noticed in Sappho's work, drop your favourite lines/fragments/phrases, or anything else you would like to mention!