Sappho Translation Reflection

For my Sappho translation poem, I drew inspiration from three different translators- Basil Bunting, Horace Gregory, and William Carlos Williams. I chose these poems because they are all written relatively close in time and each poem had an image upon which I molded my three stanzas. All three poems seem to be written from the perspective of a man admiring his beloved. I chose, however, to write my poem from the opposite perspective of the beloved admiring her loving man. All three poems contain imagery in which the man compares his beloved to nature, so I used nature as a median for my comparisons as well. First, Williams has strong imagery in his first two stanzas about a man being speechless at the beauty of his beloved, and my poem starts with the beloved being flattered by her man's speechlessness. I, also, liked how Gregory, in his last stanza, talks optimistically about focusing not on the thunderstorms of life, but on the beautiful stars instead; in my poem the beloved is thanking he who loves her for his optimism much like the optimism that Gregory projects. Finally, I really liked how Bunting juxtaposes light and darkness in his 3rd and 4th stanzas, so I used images of color and black and white to mimic him in my poem.

The beauty, and sometimes horror, of translation is that it allows much room for interpretation and personalization. Words, meanings, intentions, and endings can all be molded in the midst of translation to change the story so that it relates to all people. I took the Sappho translation poems and put my own personal twist on the situation, for better or for worse.

Gender is the main difference between my poem and the three poems I modeled my Sappho translation after. My poem, so to speak, "turns the table," on the other three poems and offers light to the lesser heard story of the romance that posses the speaker of the original three. If my presumptions are correct and the three original poems are from a man's point-of-view, then my poem looks at the man from the woman's point-of-view. She is admiring how much her man loves her, but concerned that he may love her too much; if something were to happen to her she feels he would be so devastated that his life would end. In general, I think my poem challenges the basic stereotypes people have of all relationships where the woman is the weak, infatuated partner and the man is the strong figure-head trying to protect the woman. In my poem the opposite occurs.