Alex Conall, social justice bard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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poetree2013-09-19 01:17 pm
alexconall) wrote in poetree2013-09-19 01:17 pm
advancing Sappho into the English-speaking modern day
I owe jjhunter a lot for how this poem turned out in the end. My initial idea for remixing Sappho Fragment 16 was to translate (more in the sense of 'moving sideways' than in the sense involving multiple languages) the concepts into a poetic form to which English is better suited. In a way, that's what I did in the end. The images of armies and Helen are Sappho's, but Sappho was writing about her conception of beauty, speaking as a queer woman of Lesbos millennia ago, and I am here writing of mine, speaking as a queer woman of today's USA.
The meter is not Sapphic, more's the pity, but, uh, Wiki 'Sapphic stanza' and scroll down to the poems by Lee and Tranter. Someday I'll write a true Sapphic poem in English; this is not that day. Anyway, English iambic pentameter is eminently suited to describing beauty, as any student of Shakespeare knows.
I present:
"Anaktoria"
My Tori's face won't launch a thousand ships.
She's no Anne Hathaway or Tyra Banks.
I would hear one sweet word from her lips
and sing to Aphrodite with my thanks.
Which Muse inspires Tori, I know not,
but surely she's the greatest of the nine—
just see the intricacy of her plot,
admire how her careful syntax shines.
Some men would say how beautiful the fleet
that sailed to kidnap Helen from her Troy.
Some men would praise the military beat
of drums and step of boots as men deploy.
I look at Tori when I want to see
true beauty. Tori, artist, can create.
An army is meant to destroy, not be
a tool to build. But sadly, Tori's straight.
jjhunter a lot for how this poem turned out in the end. My initial idea for remixing Sappho Fragment 16 was to translate (more in the sense of 'moving sideways' than in the sense involving multiple languages) the concepts into a poetic form to which English is better suited. In a way, that's what I did in the end. The images of armies and Helen are Sappho's, but Sappho was writing about her conception of beauty, speaking as a queer woman of Lesbos millennia ago, and I am here writing of mine, speaking as a queer woman of today's USA.The meter is not Sapphic, more's the pity, but, uh, Wiki 'Sapphic stanza' and scroll down to the poems by Lee and Tranter. Someday I'll write a true Sapphic poem in English; this is not that day. Anyway, English iambic pentameter is eminently suited to describing beauty, as any student of Shakespeare knows.
I present:
"Anaktoria"
My Tori's face won't launch a thousand ships.
She's no Anne Hathaway or Tyra Banks.
I would hear one sweet word from her lips
and sing to Aphrodite with my thanks.
Which Muse inspires Tori, I know not,
but surely she's the greatest of the nine—
just see the intricacy of her plot,
admire how her careful syntax shines.
Some men would say how beautiful the fleet
that sailed to kidnap Helen from her Troy.
Some men would praise the military beat
of drums and step of boots as men deploy.
I look at Tori when I want to see
true beauty. Tori, artist, can create.
An army is meant to destroy, not be
a tool to build. But sadly, Tori's straight.
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