Today's poem:
I seek and desire
- by Sappho
translated from the ancient Greek by Bliss Carman
I seek and desire,
Even as the wind
That travels the plain
And stirs in the bloom
Of the apple-tree.
I wander through life,
With the searching mind
That is never at rest,
Till I reach the shade
Of my lover’s door.
A Love Letter to the Beating Heart
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/opinion/heart-romance-health-organ.html
Over on Insta, there’s this lovely rainbowy" art challenge called "Hue Years Resolution". Since it’s the first time in ages I’ve actually made something creative again I wanted to share it here too. I participated with "hidden poems" also known as "Blackout poetry". In German I named them "Versteckte Verse". Annnnnyhow, here goes the first one in red:
"Sappho
sighed
and
began to
like
more Sapphos. She invented
sighing."
(1/6)
#MastoArt #HueYearsResolution #VerstVers #BlackoutPoetry #Sappho
@Ursuursulala so it is true „Ask any aussie. They'll tell ya”. (https://youtube.com/@crocturnbull?si=olyFHFbuvpMf6ER3) #australia #sappho #crocturnbull
I got a new book to read.
#History #Book #Poetry #Sappho #Sapphic #LGBT #Greek #GreekPoetry #Poems #GreekPoems #Lesbos
Ancient Greek Lyrics by Willis Barnstone, 2009
Ancient Greek Lyrics collects Willis Barnstone's elegant translations of Greek lyric poetry—including the most complete Sappho in English, newly translated. This volume includes a representative sampling of all the significant poets, from Archilochos, in the 7th century BCE, through Pindar and the other great singers of the classical age, down to the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods.
"Sappho" fresco/Portrait of a Young Woman with Stylus, 50 - 79 CE, Pompeii
The "Sappho" fresco is a 1st-century AD painting from Pompeii depicting a young woman holding a writing tablet and stylus, symbols of literacy and education in Roman society. Though 19th-century scholars speculated it portrayed the Greek poet Sappho, modern scholars believe it’s simply an upper-class Pompeiian woman. Discovered in 1760, the fresco is now housed at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples and notably inspired Chinese poet Shao Xunmei to take up poetry after he saw it in the early 1920s.
Today's poem:
Ode To Aphrodite
- by Sappho
https://www.tumblr.com/ukdamo/799567864674828288/ode-to-aphrodite?source=share
Weekend post - Toronto Island: #Island ferries always have an aura and spirit that transcend #time and #geography. Be they in Istanbul, Seattle, Toronto, Mumbai, or Mytilene, the home island of the poet #Sappho
📌 Traveling on an island ferry is a form of poetry and transcendence. And anyone who speaks from their heart and transcends the present is a poet, e.g., think of #PattiSmith. Poets are makers of the third eye gaze - poetry is a form of time travel.
It Was Summer When I Found You: A Reflection on Sappho
There are voices in history that never quite fade—only soften, like a song carried by the wind across centuries. Sappho is one of those voices.
I recently came across a poem attributed to her, though likely shaped through modern interpretation:
It was summer when I found you
In the meadow long ago,
And the golden vetch was growing
By the shore.
Did we falter when love took us
With a gust of great desire?
Does the barley bid the wind wait
In his course?
It’s a gentle but powerful piece, evoking the golden stillness of summer and the unstoppable force of love. The imagery is tactile—meadows, shorelines, golden vetch—and yet the heart of the poem lies in the final lines, where Sappho (or the poet speaking in her voice) asks: Did we falter? Could we have resisted love, even if we tried?
In that question lies something ancient and eternal.
Sappho lived over 2,600 years ago on the island of Lesbos, and yet she wrote with astonishing intimacy about longing, friendship, heartbreak, and the rhythms of nature. Most of her work survives only in fragments, but those fragments breathe with feeling. She reminds us that love is not always chosen—it sweeps us up like the wind through barley fields.
For a long time, I struggled to connect with Sappho as a person. Her world seemed too distant, too veiled in myth. But this poem—this moment in a summer meadow—brought her close. I no longer needed to understand her in the academic sense. I only needed to listen.
Perhaps that is the gift of poetry: to create bridges between times, between strangers, between hearts. Sappho once wrote:
“someone will remember us, I say, even in another time.”
Today, I do.
Thank you for joining me in the Reading Room.
Until next time keep reading and reciting poetry!
Rebecca
I’m currently away on a brief blog break, so comments are turned off for now. Thank you for visiting Rebecca’s Reading Room—your presence here is always cherished. I look forward to reconnecting with you soon. 🌿
"[Sappho et ses consœurs] savent, en revanche, faire la fête, et ne se privent pas d'y inviter des garçons : "Allons, éveille-toi, avec les garçons de ton âge, avance !" Pour motiver le blondin mollasson, un poème fait miroiter "les jeunes filles célébrant toute la nuit la fête, chantant ton désir et l'amour de ta future femme à la ceinture de violettes."
(Laure De Chantal, Les neuf vies de #Sappho)
"#Sappho a été non seulement la première femme écrivant mais aussi la première personne à écrire en son nom propre, sans invoquer l'aide des divinités de l'inspiration. La première confession humaine est celle d'une femme ; le premier auteur, une autrice ; avant elle, il n'y avait que des histoires, qui circulaient depuis la nuit des temps, incréées."
Laure De Chantal, Les neuf vies de Sappho : le premier écrivain est une écrivaine, éditions Champs, 2025
If you ask me about the love of my life, I won’t just tell you I love her.
I’ll tell you she’s the one who stayed when my world was unraveling. When everything felt broken inside me, she didn’t turn away. She sat beside me in the silence, when I had no words left. She held me through pain she didn’t cause and never made me feel like I was a burden.
She saw the real me. The me sobbing on the bathroom floor. The me drowning in emotions too big to name. Cont. ⬇️
Great opening of beautiful new archive/exhibion space/library of our project partner #QWIEN #Vienna Center for #Queer #History on 11 June 🌈
