Haiku Hopscotch

Hey world, It occured to me recently, I write a weekly blog about poetry and yet have very little of my own on it. It is not because I never write any, quite the contrary.  I spend a lot of time reflecting on others' poetry, and as a result I find inspiration from a variety of different styles and sources. So I figured it was time to post my juvenilia for the world to see. Juvenilia, by the way, is the writing we produce when we're young, presumably to regret when we're old. Or not. The themes of my poetry are often linked with emotions, and I am also very fond of imagery. For some reason, I love writing poems that evoke a sense of nostalgia. I wrote one last week, about going to the beach in the summer with my family. One of the childhood memories I cherish most is going to the beach with my family and spending days there filled with sand castles, jumping in the waves and dodging pesky seagulls. My feet burn from the sun kissed sand. I hop as fast as ...

Ok so in poetry society last week we were looking at haikus, and now we are going to look at a poet from the Classical world who practised a similar economy with language: Sappho (630-570BC). I myself had never heard of her until this week, probably because only 650 of the 10,000 lines she wrote have survived the ravages of time. So I proceeded to do a bit of research. A Greek poet from the island of Lesbos, Sappho wrote mainly lyric poetry, and she is best known for her poems about love. Outside of the academic circles she is perhaps best known as a symbol of same sex desire, and her island home has given its name to just this kind of thing. But back to poetry. In spite, or because, of its fragmentary form (having literally disintegrated in many cases) - and because of the various ways in which it can be translated into modern English - Sappho's poetry appeals to modernists who like to interpret imagery. Take the following example from Hymn to Aphrodite- With cha...