In our time of gender awareness and de-alienation of fringe groups, Sappho's example looms large. Women deploy her as a weapon in the long-standing fight for gender equality. At the same time, homosexuals point to her poetry as proof of the positivity in same-sex relationships. These days, it seems,

Classical & biblical poetry, Ecstatic, Feminist, Lyrical, Pathos, Rebel

History begins with the invention of writing -- the rendering of the world in concrete form. Writing removes the guesswork, the slippage, that comes with oral traditions. When Homer sat down to record the legends he had heard throughout his life, he not only initiated literature, but also began the h

Classical & biblical poetry, Dramatic, Epic, Lyrical, Mythic, Sublime

In a 1909 essay called "How to Write a Play," George Bernard Shaw argued that the great playwright must "pick out the significant incidents from the chaos of daily happenings and arrange them so that their relation to one another becomes significant, thus changing us from bewildered spectators of a m

Composed, Dark, Irish renaissance, Lyrical, Political, Sincere

There is a particular grunt, sputter, and song in a Heaney poem: "Perch on their water perch hung in the clear Bann River/Near the clay bank in alder dapple and waver." This is another poet in love with his language -- specifically, the cadences of the Irish tongue. The sounds of clattering, bumping,

Composed, Event, Lyrical, Modernist poetry, Mythic, Sensual, Serene