During my poetry class, Professor Range often set us up on what she called “blind dates with a poet,” where she would give us a poetry collection she thought we may enjoy. For the first round, she set me up with Sappho, a poet whose work we unfortunately only have fragments of. Sappho often wrote about nature, the love of both women and men, and figures in Greek mythology. We then had to create poems that mimicked the style and word choice of our poet. The following two poems are my attempt at mimicking Sappho’s fragments, and are some of my favorite poems I’ve ever crafted.
In Bloom
I yearn for the lush season of thyme,
hyacinth, and hayseed,
yet the burial urns are the only things
flowering in this barren field.
Remnants of Youth
She was loose limbs and
rosy ears, brimful with braided white lies about broken
rules and forgotten chores – but reduced now
to settled ash in this barren field.