Sappho
3
8.1
- proper noun
- /ˈsæfoʊ/
- Literature
:
Safo
- Sappho is a famous poet from ancient Greece.
- Sappho the poet
- Anacreon and Sappho
- Sappho, Eliot
Examples
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Like Sappho, Eliot became a literary celebrity.
Academic text (2016) -
I get the same kind of buzz from Sappho's fragments, John Ashbery, Emily Dickinson, and even Aram Saroyan's minimal poems.
Academic text (2009) -
Like Sappho, Eliot composed and performed her poems.
Academic text (2016) -
The wind blows across the Aegean, bringing what the ancients learned from their ancients, the poetry of Sappho.
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Its abbreviated form—recalling Sappho's "I Sleep Alone"—belies the quality, the honesty, of its emotion.
Fiction book (1997) -
Indeed, throughout her poems, Eliot linked herself to a great poetic tradition by invoking Dante, Boccaccio, Homer, Erinna, Sappho, and Shakespeare.
Academic text (2016) -
The poetry of Sappho is renowned for its emotional depth and lyrical beauty.
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Many scholars admire the works of Sappho, whose fragments offer insight into ancient Greek culture.
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The poetic style of Sappho has influenced countless writers throughout history.
Surface Forms
Etymology
Sappho was an ancient Greek poet from Lesbos who wrote short, deeply felt poems often sung to a lyre. The lyre is the same root as the word lyric, which originally meant 'a song', so Sappho is remembered as the voice of personal, emotional poetry.