Why Write About Poetry
I'm writing about female authors of ancient epigram.
Terrible things are happening in the world.
If I finish the paper no one will read it.
If anyone did, what difference does it make?
Terrible things are happening in the world.
I’m writing about a few long-dead writers
Most of whose work was not preserved
Because they were female so nobody cared.
There was a brief warm blip of time
In the intellectual-friendly Hellenistic period
When a few female authors
Actually had a bit of an audience
And their work was copied
Enough times that we still have a little of it now.
Then they were gone. Their day was done.
Roman men, later,
Saved nothing Roman ladies wrote*.
They complained that female poets existed at all,
And actually spoke up at dinner parties
Expecting you to listen to their wretched drivel,
Can you believe it?
Maybe it was wretched drivel.
We’ve got no proof it wasn’t.
I’m supposed to write about this. It’s depressing.
Terrible things are happening in the world.
In that same sea around which my poets lived and wrote
In that same sea, 3000 migrants drowned last week,
Men, women, children,
The death ahead worth risking to escape the horrors behind.
How does a paper on long dead minor female poets matter?
Female poets no one reads,
Lucky few survivors from the crowd of all the female poets
No one will ever read again
Because they were not preserved.
Because nobody cared. Because female.
Loud-mouthed cows
Who didn’t even know enough
To shut their traps at dinner parties.
Meanwhile off the coast of Greece
Where Anyte wrote about dead pets, and temple dedications,
And children playing with a goat
And a mother weeping for her dead daughter
And girls who killed themselves to avoid rape
after their city was sacked by Gauls
And a father weeping for another daughter
And a brave young man who died in combat
And several beautiful statues,
Aphrodite, Hermes, a pretty Bacchic goat,
And pleasant spots to sit and enjoy the breeze -
Off that coast, thousands are drowning
And washing up on the shores of the Greek islands
Where Erinna wrote about her dead childhood friend
And Sappho, maybe it was Sappho,
Told us about a dead fisherman
And about a stone that marvellously speaks
The name of her donor
whenever you look at it -
Washing up on those shores,
Thousands of nameless dead, fleeing horrors
And sinking off the coast of southern Italy
Where Nossis wrote of love
And paintings that look just like
The women who dedicated them
And prayed for Artemis
To give her friend an easy childbirth
And dedicated to Hera a cloak she wove
with her mother and grandmother
And asked to be remembered, like Sappho -
Sinking off that coast with full cargoes of the dead
Boat after leaky boat, overloaded,
Boats that should never have been put in the water
But people were desperate,
their choices were gone
And in Byzantium,
Where Moero wrote about a cluster of grapes
Dedicated to Aphrodite
As if it were a daughter
Mourned by a loving mother
And where she gave birth, also,
To a famous male tragedian
None of whose work survives -
Byzantium suffers under a ruler
Who is still better than those around him,
Refugees flock TO Byzantium, not away
for now
It’s never been easy, life around that sea
And yet these poets thought it was worthwhile
To spend their time writing about dedications, and friends,
And daughters dead too soon,
And spots one can sit for a moment
and enjoy the view
Even though the next poem is about a soldier
Or a soldier’s horse,
Dead in the omnipresent wars
Perhaps if it was worth their while to write
It is worth my while to write about them,
And not to hate the men
Who hated them and all their sisters
For opening their mouths.
Perhaps it is worth my while
To do my part to make them remembered,
Even though no one will read me either,
Even though terrible things are happening.
Sappho lived through war and exile
But never talked about it. For her
The face of who you loved
Mattered more than anything at all.
***
*well, maybe one
