NaPoWriMo Day 25: Fragments

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Table of Contents

• Freewrite

• Poem: “Fragment 94” by Sappho, Translated by Anne …

• Divinations

• Prompt

Freewrite

With this freewrite, as well as all freewrites, do not put any pressure on yourself to be good. You are simply getting thoughts on the page. You can write in poetry or in prose, but feel free to write poorly, sloppily, redundantly, and with cliches. Now is the time for ideas—we will eventually sculpt those ideas into art.

Freewrite for 8-10 minutes. Think of something that’s fragmented or incomplete. Maybe a memory, a stage in your life, a feeling that isn’t fully formed, an aspect of your identity, etc.

Write about that fragmented thing. What’s missing? What would bridge the gap? What created the gap?

Poem: “Fragment 94” by Sappho, Translated by Anne Carson

I simply want to be dead.
Weeping she left me

with many tears and said this:
Oh how badly things have turned out for us.
Sappho, I swear, against my will I leave you.

And I answered her:
Rejoice, go and
remember me. For you know how we cherished you.

But if not, I want
to remind you
]and beautiful times we had.

For many crowns of violets
and roses
]at my side you put on

and many woven garlands
made of flowers
around your soft throat.

And with sweet oil
costly
you anointed yourself

and on a soft bed
delicate
you would let loose your longing

and neither any[ ]nor any
holy place nor
was there from which we were absent

no grove[ ]no dance
]no sound
[

Divinations

This poem is by Sappho, an ancient Greek poet who was famous in both her time and ours. If I remember correctly, we only have one complete poem of Sappho’s. The rest are fragments, with missing texts and words elided by time.

There have been many attempts to translate Sappho, but Anne Carson’s translations are the most interesting to me, in that they incorporate those missing fragments into the poems themselves. This is still Sappho’s poem, but Carson’s mind is very present here.

I love how what’s missing in this poem is integrated into the text. The absences haunt. Like here:

But if not, I want
to remind you
]and beautiful times we had.

How ironic that Sappho’s reminder is lost to history, and how painful that it’s followed by those beautiful times. What’s this missing memory, here? Is it also beautiful? Is it also painful?

Or, this moment at the poem’s close:

and on a soft bed
delicate
you would let loose your longing

and neither any[ ]nor any
holy place nor
was there from which we were absent

no grove[ ]no dance
]no sound
[

The poem ends with what’s missing, both named and unnamed, and those absences invite the imagination. Perhaps we fill it in with our own lives, or perhaps some deeper memory, some collection emotion is evoked here. In any case, we can never answer what is missing, not so long as history remains quiet, but this poem invokes our unconscious minds in startling ways, in which what is unspoken is just as loud as what’s spoken.

Prompt

Write a poem that incorporates fragments, absences, and elisions into the text itself. Do this with intention, so that those absences still say something, even if they speak below the realms of language.