William Chiu

From reading the first few poems of Sappho, I could clearly see the difference between her writing style in comparison to that of the male writers we have studied in the past. Throughout the reading of the poems I felt as if I was in a dream state in which I felt at ease and time was at a slow pace with everything happening in the softest of ways. It was almost a breath of fresh air to read literature dealing with love and and emotions as opposed to war and trickery. Most apparent of this mood is when she writes about the marriage Hektor and Andromakhe and says, "the sound of the cymbals, and then the maidens sang in clear tones a sacred song and a divinely-sweet echo reached the sky..." Upon reading this, I imagined I was sitting in the back of a wedding ceremony where the setting is dimmed to a romantic lighting with music sung softly to the hearts most most sensual desires. The feeling of sensuality is further felt when she describes the rush of sensation her body experiences from the close proximity of being close woman she desires. She describes her lust as by having "instantly a delicate flame runs beneath my [her] skin." The language of the poetry also appear to have a direct meaning without much confusion as to the meaning of the connection of words.

Sappho

Before this class I was not familiar with the work of Sappho. Her form of writing is completely different than the works we’ve discussed in the past. The language is more blunt and straight forward; displayed by her willingness to openly talk about sexuality as she does. Her poems are a little hard to interpret because they tend to send off mixed messages. Some unique characteristics of Sappho’s poems include the author’s name in her own work, and the ambiguity as to whether she is referring to a man or a woman. Sappho speaks of love between all genders. The word lesbian derived from Sappho.

Sappho Poetry

Sappho's poetry is intriguing. Most of the poems you would read and not know a woman was writing. There are very few lines that hint at a female author, especially in the third poem, where she describes the jealousy she feels for the man who gets to sit near her love and the physical effect the woman has on her. She describes the way her body reacts when her love is near as not being able to see, getting hot, shivering, etc. I can see how her writing is viewed as incredibly erotic in this case, since it sounds like she is pretty much having an orgasm in this poem just at the mere presence of the woman she loves. I found her other poems and poem fragments to be more subtle with the eroticism than this poem, but definitely still there, as in her poem where she compares a woman to a ripe red apple that no one else can reach. This could definitely be an analogy for the woman's virginity, or love/passion in general. This poem seems to convey that although everyone else has forgotten about it, the author herself remembers and desires it.

Sappho poetry

This is my feeling about Sappho when I read her poetries: She just simply expresses her feelings without any further purpose. Gilbert once criticized Sappho poetry in the "History of Ancient Greek literature", which said that Sappho did not need to use gorgeous word to decorate her poetries because the poetries are simply about love. They expressed the feeling of love so strongly. Gilbert also disagreed on the comparison of Sappho and Homer. However, if we regard our inner world as vast as the outside environment, we can not deny that Sappho may become another Homer, which is also the reason why Horace praised her masculine. Sappho reveals the most subtle and mysterious inner world of human. She is the pioneer who influences many femal poets later.

Sappho

Sappho was a woman who was said to have killed herself (gone over a cliff) because her husband did not return from war. From this it can be said that she is a very emotional person who would do a lot for love. In the first lines of this poem she calls on Aphrodite (who is the goddess of love) to help her with her broken heart. She believes in the power of Aphrodite and thinks she can solve all problems.
Sappho is unlike the other literary pieces we have read in this class. It is very emotional and passionate. She is in love with love and it is seen in every line of the poem. To Sappho, life without love is no life at all.

Othello, Sappho

This week in class we read the end of Othello and began to read over Sappho poetry. The ending of Othello was very interesting. I enjoyed seeing the events unfold leading to Othello’s’ murder of Desdemona. To kill her, Othello at first decides to poison her, but Iago persuades him to strangle her instead. I think it is stupid how easily Othello was manipulated by Iago, but I understand that Othello deeply trusted Iago, making it hard to believe he was being lied to.
We also read some poetry by Sappho this week. I found the poetry to be a bit confusing to understand, but one thing I noticed was that a lot of passion was put into her poetry. It’s disappointing that much of her work is lost and only fragments remain from most of her work, as it’d be interesting to clarify a lot of ambiguous meanings to a lot of the poems.

Courtney Lum

Reading Sappho poetry is quite unique from anything else we have read in class. What is so fascinating is the desire and emotion felt by herself for the other person. It is also most intriguing that it is so enigmatic as to what her sexual orientation is which would depict whether she is desiring or merely admiring the subject in question. Also the fact that there is such little known about her and her personal life makes her poetry all the more fascinating and personal. These poems are really the only pieces of information about her and seeing that they are so cryptic yet simple at the same time truly expresses her as a complex woman we may never understand.

Willie Ho

This being the first time experiencing reading Sappho poetry, I had a mixed number of opinions towards it. It is written in a manner that can be viewed in many ways. It almost seems as if she tried to confuse the readers. Also it does not help that the translations vary in accuracy.

When I read the poems, I did not think of it to be anything perverted. It seems more like a state of admiration. However, upon being notified that the subject of matter was perverse, it seemed to be more convincing than the conclusions that I had previously made. After discovering this, I read each and every other poem with this mindset and made out the "truth" behind the texts. This matter is still subjective though, because we will never truly know if the texts were surely meant to be viewed in this aspect.

All in all, the agenda she took in writing these poems are unknown but I am convinced she is a lesbian and she did not take on any male persona. I think people just make up the ideas of "taking on another persona" dogmatically. They just want to prove others wrong for the sake of doing so.

Sappho

I have never read or even heard of the poems by Sappho until now, which is why I thought they would be like every other poem I have been uninterested in reading. After reading many of her poems, it is clear that she is writing with a lot of emotion. I feel as though her poems are concerned mainly with love, whether it be the passion of love or the sorrow associated with the absence of love. I also feel that she chose her words carefully to effectively convey some emotions. For example, she uses the phrases, "...my frenzied heart", and "..Come to me now once again and release me from grueling anxiety." I found that analyzing the poems is quite difficult since there is little known about Sappho other than the assumptions made about her and the context in which she wrote the poems. Also I typically come to the wrong conclusions about poems, since I usually have no idea what it is talking about. Overall though, I didn't feel as bored reading these poems as I have felt when reading others. I found this interesting.

Sappho Poetry

I’ve never read Sappho poetry before, so it is rather interesting to me. The poems are full of emotion, passion, and desire. I stress that it is not possible to draw certain conclusions as to whether Sappho’s poetry is a reflection of her own sexual orientation or situation, because we know so little about her as it is. I would like to think it is her own portrayal of her feelings, because her positive presentation of Helen is expressed with a tone that would render her words meaningless if they were not her personal sentiments.

Sappho’s poetry has such clarity and simplicity. Her images are very sharp, such as the sparrows that draw Aphrodite’s chariot and the solitary red apple at the tree-top. I think it is very effective that she quotes the direct words of conversations, real or imaginary, to have immediacy.