The Poems of Sappho and Others

Like the the store brand version Sappho if you got a value set at Walmart.A 1918 Victorian style translation like if someone has just read Lady of Shalot and thought hmm what if this...but with Sappho?!This book is where sapphic passion goes to die. I wish I could unsee this book, which is a bender of oxymoronic prose by which I mean how can there be such a widely abused rhyme scheme and emotional stylization that is so cloyingly tittilating yet jarringly flaccid all at once.If you have ever bought $10 winter boots instead of investing a little more you will know what I felt. Have you even bought your cat the wet food at family dollar and then it threw up and then your housemate who saw her throw up threw up and started to freak out about it, causing your dog to start hollering and so the other dog loses control of its bladder and then your elderly parent their bowels and it burns your eyes and you cry.Anyways.So after a quite frankly disappointing test run with this book on the town where I nearly fell asleep waiting for my roommate at the ER and briefly considered a book burning I think I found a sole redeeming factor in page 90 which I will try to upload a picture of.Otherwise tragically styled in the heavy handed romanticism of Victorian prose. How can something be so bland and tepidly restrained, yet spattering out in melodrama at the same time? If you want to make sure that someone will absolutely despise Sappho on first take give them this atrocity of literature.By some miracle the brief preface manages a solid recognition the power and legacy, but most importantly, sovereign autonomy of the lesbian institution.That said, when I read the actual translations all I can picture is Sappho stumbling around in a hoop skirt accused of frigidity and hysteria, a totally neutered and house broken wide eyed womanhood of dollike vacantness and resignation to domesticity, all with the charms of complacently docile naivité. #ripsappho#sappho #dissapointment #mistakes #thisiswhywecanthavenicethings #shameful and basically slander.Lessons learned here are don’t trust the Victorians, never leave Walters hands idle, and don’t skimp on Sappho.

i really love the collection! the names of these poems are outrageous. modern writers can definitely learn from these nutsy gals!

A great collection of the poems of Sappho and her contemporaries.