Stream or download this episode. 

Victoria Reynolds Farmer, Katie Grubbs, and Christina Bieber Lake talk about some of Sappho’s poems about love:

• “Some Call Ships, Infantry, or Horsemen” (Lobel-Page 16);
• “That Fellow Strikes Me as God’s Double” (Lobel-Page 31);
• “Star Clusters Near the Fair Moon Dim” (Lobel-Page 34);
• “Like a Gale Smiting an Oak” (Lobel-Page 47);
• “I Loved You Once” (Lobel-Page 49);
• “In All Honesty, I Want to Die” (Lobel-Page 94);
• “Off in Sardis” (Lobel-Page 96);
• “Sweet Mother, I Can’t Take Shuttle in Hand” (Lobel-Page 102);
• “That Impossible Predator” (Lobel-Page 130);
• “Atthis, You Looked at What I Was” (Lobel-Page 131);
• “You Were at Hand” (Voigt 48);
• “Stand and Face Me” (Voigt 138);
• “Moon and the Pleides Go Down” (Voigt 168b).

SHOW NOTES

• Our translations of Sappho: Anne Carson (2002), Jim Powell (2007), and Philip Freeman (2016).
• Victoria thinks Sappho has an Ani DiFranco vibe.
• Helen’s face launched a thousand ships.
• Sappho seems to predict green sickness.
• Victoria also sees prefigurings of Marvell and the carpe diem tradition.
• Christina points us to Glenn W. Most’s “Reflecting Sappho.”
• Victoria quotes Stephen Booth on Shakespeare’s sexuality:
  

  “Shakespeare was almost certainly homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. The sonnets provide no evidence on the matter.”

• Katie connects V168b to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed.” Victoria connects it to Billie Holiday. And Tori Amos.
• Walter Pater said that all art aspires to music.
• Our theme music was provided by Blue Dot Sessions.

RELEVANT NETWORK SHOWS

• The Christian Feminist Podcast 103: Emily Dickinson.
• The Christian Humanist Podcast 41: Carpe Diem.
• The Christian Humanist Podcast 173: Doctor Faustus.
• The Christian Humanist Podcast 223: The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem. 
• The Core Curriculum, Series 2, Episode 5: Republic, Book 5.