Art thou the topmost apple The gatherers could reach, Reddening on the bough? Shall I not take thee?
bliss carmanI am a passionate admire of Sappho, but that has to be one of the stupidest sentences I have ever seen in a scholarly book.
camille pagliaBelove' d, what are names but air? Choose thou whatever suits the line; Call me Sappho, call me Chloris, Call me Lalage or Doris, Only, only call meThine.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeDark Sappho! could not verse immortal save That beast imbued with such immortal fire? Could she not live who life eternal gave?
RochdaleSun-swept beaches with a light wind blowingFrom the immense blue circle of the sea,And the soft thunder where long waves whiten —These were the same for Sappho as for me.Two thousand years — much has gone by forever,Change takes the gods and ships and speech of men —But here on the beaches that time passes overThe heart aches now as then.
sara teasdaleSappho and Emily Dickinson are the only woman geniuses in poetic history.
camille pagliaSome thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine: A tenth is Sappho, maid divine.
Sappho is a great poet because she is a lesbian, which gives her erotic access to the Muse. Sappho and the homosexual-tending Emily Dickinson stand alone above women poets, because poetry's mystical energies are ruled by a hierach requiring the sexual subordination of her petitioners. Women have achieved more as novelists than as poets because the social novel operates outside the ancient marriage of myth and eroticism.