#sappho's writing

[mournfulroses]

Noelle Kocot, from 4; "Sappho to Erinna," originally published in May 2021

[scarymeandyke]

“Someone will remember us

I say

even in another time”

//Sappho, Fragment 147

[tendermimi]

Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments tr. Anne Carson

[asoftepiloguemylove]

William Shakespeare // pinterest // Feel Good (2020-2021) cr. Joe Hampson & Mae Martin // Natalie Diaz These Hands, If Not Gods // Sandra Cisneros Woman at Hollering Creek: Stories; "Never Marry a Mexican" // Holland NUMBER BOY // Richard Siken Crush // 스물다섯 스물하나 Twenty-Five Twenty-One (2022) dir. Jung Ji-hyun // Sappho // Dodie She // Maureen Seaton Furious Cooking; "Swan Lake" // unknown // Frank Ocean Forrest Gump // แปลรักฉันด้วยใจเธอ I Told Sunset About You / I Promised You the Moon (2020-2022) dir. Naruebet Kuno & Tossaphon Riantong // Danez Smith Recklessly (via @tendermimi)

[feral-ballad]

Alda Merini, tr. by Susan Stewart, from Love Lessons: Selected Poems of Alda Merini; “Sappho”

[Text ID: “with violets and flowers, you yourself a violet,”]

[serenelity]

because where do i put the love if i nobody loves me back

[burningvelvet]

Lord Byron writing about book-burning, queer representation, and the value of poetry . . . in 1821:

“Let us hear no more of this trash about ‘licentiousness.’ Is not ‘Anacreon’ taught in our schools? translated, praised, and edited? Are not his Odes the amatory praises of a boy? Is not Sappho's Ode on a girl? Is not this sublime and (according to Longinus) fierce love for one of her own sex? And is not Phillips's translation of it in the mouths of all your women? And are the English schools or the English women the more corrupt for all this? When you have thrown the ancients into the fire it will be time to denounce the moderns. ‘Licentiousness!’ — there is more real mischief and sapping licentiousness in a single French prose novel, in a Moravian hymn, or a German comedy, than in all the actual poetry that ever was penned, or poured forth, since the rhapsodies of Orpheus. The sentimental anatomy of Rousseau and Madame de Staël are far more formidable than any quantity of verse. They are so, because they sap the principles, by reasoning upon the passions; whereas poetry is in itself passion, and does not systematise. It assails, but does not argue; it may be wrong, but it does not assume pretensions to Optimism.”

Context: this letter was written during the Bowles-Pope Controversy, a seven-year long public debate in the English literary scene primarily between the priest, poet, and critic William Lisle Bowles and the poet, peer, and politician Lord Byron. The debate began in 1807 when Bowles published an edition of the famous writer Alexander Pope’s work which included an essay he wrote criticizing the writer’s character, morals, and how he should be remembered. Today, we would say that Bowles tried to “cancel” Alexander Pope, who had affairs without marrying, and whose works had sexual themes. Lord Byron defended Pope, who was one of his all-time favorite writers. Pope had been dead since 1744, so he was not personally involved. This debate shows that while moral standards have changed throughout the centuries, the ways people have debated about morality have remained similar.

Source of the excerpt: — Moore’s Life of Byron in one volume, 1873, p. 708 - https://books.google.com/books?id=Q3zPkPC8ECEC&pg=PA708&lpg=PA708&dq=%22Are+not+his+Odes+the+amatory+praises

Sources on the Bowles-Pope Controversy: — Chandler, James. “The Pope Controversy: Romantic Poetics and the English Canon.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 10, no. 3, 1984, pp. 481–509. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343304. — https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pope-Bowles-controversy — Bowles, Byron and the Pope-controversy by Jacob Johan van Rennes, Ardent Media, 1927.

[spitefulfemme]

pretty hyper-femme who wears a lot of pink + her pretty butch who rocks the white tank top and middle school boy shorts combo = a match made in hell🎀

- this post was made by a minor, mdni accs dni.

[planetoflove444]

Sappho, ‘Six Fragments for Atthis"

(trans. Sherod Santos)

[monachopsis-muse]

"Your heart will become a dusty piano in the basement of a church and she will play you when no one is looking. Now you understand why it's called an organ."

- Rudy Francisco, Like Every Other Man.

[angelbambifemme]

Sitting on the edge of me and my butches shared bed, one leg arched, toes pointed, I slip on my black opaque pantyhose.

I take out my hair rollers, letting my hair cascade down to frame my face with luscious, loose auburn curls, like a woman straight from an old Hollywood film. I shimmy into my tight, sparkling red tube dress, signaling my butch to zip the back for me. He watches me as I get ready for the night, enamoured, fascinated, utterly enraptured by me. His femme.

His gaze nearly swallows me up, as I sweep my long lashes with thick black mascara, blending brown eyeshadow into the creases of my eyelids, slicking on my favorite sanguine lipstick and brushing my long nails with a matching shimmery polish, puffing my cheeks and nose with rosy rouge and stamping my neck and wrists with musky, yet sweet-smelling floral perfume.

I clip on my pearl-beaded necklace and matching earrings, following up with sparkling gold bracelets.

Lastly, I allow my butch to slip on my red high heels for me. He kisses up and down my calves as he does so, reminding me of how beautiful I am.

We exchange a few tender kisses, and though my lipstick has been smudged, I'm not so bothered. It doesn't take much to freshen it up later. I don't mind being late.

[tendermimi]

Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments tr. Anne Carson

[apolline-lucy]

Any tips for writing sapphic romance

I don’t think writing sapphic romance is much different from writing any kind of romance. Feelings are feelings, and human beings are human beings. We all experience love in very different ways, and yet it renders us crazy and desperate all the exact same.

I don’t write romance, but romantic fantasy; the nuance is that rather than having the plot gravitate around a relationship, the relationship supports my plot (usually a magical adventure of sorts). And whether i write wlw, mlm, or else, I don’t change my formula. I make every character unique and imperfect, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation.

What I like is putting them in uncomfortable situations (aka hell) and then watching them suffer, really. I put together people that originally don’t belong together + forced proximity + having them face their fears + having them help & rely on one another + slow burn + making them actually get to know one another + making them doubt and cry and get real with their emotions and feelings + having their beliefs being ripped apart, twice, because betrayals + pain pain pain

Too often, I read romances that start with a physical attraction and never elaborate much deeper. Attraction is great for just dating, it’s great for erotica, but if you want a much stronger story and a relationship to seem believable, they have to go through rough patches, they have to test their limits and see the worst of each other. No one’s perfect. That’s cliche, but that’s true. Your characters can’t (and shouldn’t) be perfect either—that’s boring and no reader will identify with them. Us readers are like our characters, we want someone who will keep on loving us when we’re bleeding and screaming and hurting and making mistakes (deadly or else).

That being said, writing sapphic literature, and not necessarily romance, allows me to get more chances to explore some topics that are important to me: feminism, feminine rage, women’s sexuality, inclusiveness, friendships between women, trans women, women of colour, women being women, women supporting women, etc.

These can all be written into non-sapphic stories, of course, but the more you make space for women into your pages, the more characters are women, the more voices you give them. And us women have so many things to say.

When people ask me why I choose to write sapphic stories, here’s my answer: I simply love writing about women because women can be anyone and everything, and that’s enough for me.

Hope this helps🖤✨

[tommyohnosworld]

i love hearing your heartbeat. it’s an extension of you, it’s rhythmic, it’s soothing.

laying on your chest, my breathing slows. i become weightless, falling into your skin. your skin glows, its warmth shines rays onto my body.

your lips find my hair, leaving the gentlest kisses embedded inside the weaves. i leave a kiss on your chest, letting the action whisper its love to your ears. your heart.

[katkats-world]

afraid of losing you

i ran fluttering

like a little girl

after her mother

afraid of losing you, sappho

[spitefulfemme]

born to massage their scalp and smother them with kisses, FORCED to be states away and to tell them "i don't fw with that gay shit..."

- this post was made by a minor, mdni accs dni!