author
Sappho
Celebrated for lyric poems that feel intimate, musical, and startlingly modern, this ancient Greek writer became one of the most admired voices of the classical world. Although most of the work survives only in fragments, those pieces have shaped poetry for more than two thousand years.
3 Audiobooks
Sappho: A New Rendering
by Sappho
Les poésies de Sapho de Lesbos
by Sappho
About the author
Born on the island of Lesbos around the late seventh century BCE, Sappho was an archaic Greek poet whose songs were famous in antiquity for their emotional clarity and musical style. Ancient readers ranked her among the greatest poets, and later generations often called her simply "the Poetess."
Much of her writing is now lost, but the surviving fragments show poems about love, desire, friendship, memory, and devotion to the gods. Her best-known complete poem is the "Ode to Aphrodite," and her verse was so influential that the sapphic stanza takes its name from her.
Because the record is so old and incomplete, many details of her life remain uncertain. Even so, the pieces that remain have given her an enduring afterlife in literature, music, and modern conversations about gender and sexuality.