Sappho The Poetess Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

Sappho The Poetess



Sappho the Poetess
Are you thrice removed from reality?
To him you happened to be the tenth muse
The nine being exhausted. A mimicry
As art and banished from the Republic.
Homer’s art is lies, what is yours?
Ai’nt not the poets bring down from
Heavens, life’s tender imagined impulses
Ai’nt not they ‘besides themselves’
The universe is an idea, and you make
A reflection, an imitation. Then what is that
Which can’t be reflected, an inspiration.
An action confined to ‘single circuit of the sun’
Complete, as far as possible, and something near that.
“A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious
And, also having magnitude, complete in itself; in language
Embellished with each kind of ornament, each kind
Brought in separately in parts of the work, in dramatic,
Not in narrative form; with incidents arousing pity
And fear, wherewith to accomplish it’s catharsis
Of such emotion” –Poetics of Aristotle
Sappho the Poetess
Are you thrice removed from reality?

Sadiqullah Khan
Islamabad
September 12,2013.

POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
Portrait Bust of Sappho c.1900 by Reps & Trinte
A superb terracotta Art Nouveau portrait bust of Sappho, the famous Ancient Greek poetess.

Sappho was greatly loved for her personification of love and affection, and her creativity. Her poetry was so rhythmical, usually accompanied by music and dance, that it gained the reputation for being the Divine Inspiration of the Muses.
She was born on the Aegean island of Lesbos about 615 BC. To the Greeks Homer was the Poet and Sappho was the Poetess. Plato called her The Tenth Muse.
@ Roy Precious
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