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After Sappho

Book by Selby Wynn Schwartz · 12 quotes · Feminism, Dreams, Poetry

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All Feminism Dreams Poetry Poets Power Writing Anger Character Children Compromise Connections Creativity Death Fate Female Writers Freedom Grieving Haunted History Influence

After Sappho Quotes

“X was not a willing housewife. X remained unmoved by squalling infants, would not wear skirts that swaddled the stride, had no desire to be pursued by the hot breath of young men, failed to enjoy domestic chores, and possessed none of the decorous modesty of maidenhood.”

Book:After Sappho

Source: After Sappho

“But some of us have always seen the modern world as a sea meant to drown us.”

Power Fate Feminism Oppression

Book:After Sappho

Source: After Sappho

“When will you arrive? Why is your radiance distant from my eyes? You drop through the branches when I sleep at the roots. You pour yourself out like the light of an afternoon and yet somewhere you linger, outside the day.”

Love Waiting Lovers Pining

Book:After Sappho

Source: After Sappho

“A poet is someone who who swims inexplicably away from the shore, only to arrive at an island of her own invention”

Poetry Freedom Creativity Feminism Poets

Book:After Sappho

Source: After Sappho

“A poet is someone who stands on the door sill and sees the room before her as a sea whose waves she might dive through. … A poet is someone who swims inexplicably away from the shore, only to arrive at an island of her own invention.”

Writing Poetry Language Invention Poets

Book:After Sappho

Source: After Sappho

“…character goes underground before we are born, like the winding mass of roots that were weave down through the soil, anchoring an oak tree to this madly spinning planet.”

Writing Character History Roots Connections

Book:After Sappho

Source: After Sappho

“The death of a child makes a barbaric sound, even in print.”

Children Death Loss Grieving

Book:After Sappho

Source: After Sappho

“…the only thing she feared was compromise, the soothing voice that licks down rage until it is nothing but a small smooth lump in your hand.”

Power Feminism Influence Anger Rage Compromise

Book:After Sappho

Source: After Sappho

“Aurel hoped that women writers would disobey the laws that bound men’s books. It was time for women to take language for themselves, Aurel said, even one word at a time, to take their own names and become. To become even one word.”

Feminism Female Writers

Book:After Sappho

Source: After Sappho

“A poet is always living in kletic time, whatever her century. She is calling out, she is waiting. She lies down in the shade of the future and drowses among its roots. Her case is the genitive of remembering.”

Book:After Sappho

Source: After Sappho

“Nightmares are the visits of what has come before you undead. They claw into the seam that should sew up your life. They hiss the ancient fates that will have undone you in your very bed, how you could not move while the whole city was falling around you in blood and firelight. The entrails of birds will lie on the stones of your dreams, making signs.”

Dreams Nightmares Haunted The Subconscious

Book:After Sappho

Source: After Sappho

“Her dreams were otherworldly birds. They flew out of a stunted yew tree in the garden of her childhood and circled the roof of her house, cawing, years of their hoarse cries and black wings.”

Dreams Virginia Woolf

Book:After Sappho

Source: After Sappho