Sappho’s Space: The Community of the Poem Between

The emergence of Greek lyric in the seventh century B.C. provides plenty of evidence for the origins of the lyric in ‘the between.’ Sappho says, ‘Some say a host of horsemen is the most beautiful thing …’ (Fr. 16). Sappho says, ‘He seems to me equal to the gods’ (Fr. 31).

This space between speaker and auditor bristles with energy. It strains under the pressure of disagreement. It’s choked with passion. It’s threatened and shaped by silences of various kinds. Its wholeness is only apparent, for it represents ongoing acts of attention that are rewired with each reading. Interruption is as essential to the life of poetry as to the life of conversation.

Forms emerge from those readings that preserve the space between even as the communicants change with time. While poetic form is sometimes reduced by commentators to repeatable ‘formal’ elements (the Sapphic stanza), the specific form of each poem emerges only from its self-consuming passage through the between; the surprise attending its appearance may be compared to the appearance of a butterfly on a warm spring day. But the individual poem lasts longer than the particular butterfly.

In short the poem between is the evidence and source of a community that endures. The Greek name, found in Plato’s dialogues, for this creative space is metaxu.

Author: Tom D'Evelyn

Tom D'Evelyn is a private editor and writing tutor in Cranston RI and, thanks to the web, across the US and in the UK. He can be reached at tom.develyn@comcast.net. D'Evelyn has a PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. Before retiring he held positions at The Christian Science Monitor, Harvard University Press, Boston University and Brown University. He ran a literary agency for ten years, publishing books by Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn, among others. Before moving to Portland OR he was managing editor at Single Island Press, Portsmouth NH. He blogs at http://tdevelyn.com and other sites. View all posts by Tom D'Evelyn