Mission Statement

This is where I'll post anything that lets my creative side take over for awhile - poetry, photographs, paintings, architecture, anything that strikes me as artistic. None of it will be my own work. I'm going to start by stealing some poetry by Sappho from another blog I read. I usually don't read poetry in translation, because I believe that form is such an important part of a poem, and the form is often lost when translated. But that isn't such a problem in this case, because Sappho's poetry is incomplete (only fragments of poems remain). Reading her poetry makes me feel that the words only restrain the feeling, rather than expressing it, and being able to read only fragments is like reading the feeling rather than the words.

This is a fantastic translation by Anne Carson, who uses brackets to indicate missing fragments, rather than just filling in the space with what she feels Sappho probably said:
] frequently
] for those
I treat well are the ones who most of all
] harm me
] crazy
]
]
]
] you, I want
] to suffer
] in myself I am
aware of this
]
]

It's so intense. Part of me wants to decipher it, to know the entire poem. But most of me is content with the fragments, to feel the unrestrained emotion and to add to that my own emotions. Fragmented poetry seems almost more interactive, more enticing, less like literature and more like modern art that you impress yourself upon.