‘Entering Sappho’ Visits a Town that Lived and Died with its Naming
To enter Sappho in Sarah Dowling’s newest poetry collection, there is a reconstruction that layers itself like bricks. Within open, spacious pieces, the town’s old buildings spring up. Socks are darned and the clothes are hung to dry line after line until the reader is immersed in a place that is currently no more than a sign. Former residents provide a glimpse into a town that seemingly lived and died with its naming.
In early poems, pliable, casual diction brings the town of Sappho to life, but its voices often buckle under the pressure of remembering. The repetition of key words builds a dialect of the rural outer woods, and descriptions of place become caught in a feedback loop. In sequences such as “Oral History,” Dowling makes use of dates that, instead of being grounding, keep revealing themselves as wet stones, such as when the speaker of the poem confuses “ ’93, ’92 or 3.” In this way, Dowling sows mistrust in memory, which is later revisited in the poem “US” as the speaker’s inconsistent recollections tumble out line by line in direct address, convincing the reader that they cannot trust their own mind. Here, each page replays the same day with different focus and details, emphasizing again and again, “you may forget.”
Through the title of the collection alone, Dowling sets an expectation of both a queer and sexually explicit love story. Sappho, a famous Ancient Greek poet, wrote frequently about her love for women. The term “lesbian” is even derived from her place of birth, Lesbos. As Dowling puts it, “Sappho is want.” In other words, Sappho is desire itself. There are pieces where this passion is beautifully discovered, such as “Soft Memory,” where the lines break partway through a word on multiple occasions, indicating a sort of erotic seizing and contributing to an uneven lilt in the voice despite even line lengths.
This poem in particular also harkens back to Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho’s work, If Not, Winter, where blank space is used to signify lost text. Although there is a brittle cold to “Soft Memory” in descriptions of sweat and disorder, the heat of passion is stoked to a fever pitch so consistently that the more pallid descriptions are lost in the vibrancy of sweet grass and joy.
Dowling does not shy away from the truths of the colonial undertaking that led to Greek and Roman names echoing throughout American towns. The colonies, settlements, migrations, and plantations she names and engages with surface a history that is not fully explored, but still lies ready for open consideration on the page: “The nonlocal nature of our naming is a mouse-/ trap, an arrangement of symbols. It’s how we learn / what guns are for.” These poems hold space for the exile of Sappho and colonialism’s historical ostracization of queer individuals, offering companions to “come lie down in Sappho- / dress a little whiter and pre/ sent / your wants.” These soothing lines highlight the value and safety a named queer space can provide, while still recognizing the danger inherent in celebrating the birth of any colonial structure.
There is a lull to the words which caress the reader into an open state of mind—where a picture of an overgrown, disappearing town is painted—as Entering Sappho carefully archives a history already half-forgotten. The repeated images Dowling applies function as mnemonic devices, leaving the town as a repository of living queerness where it might least be expected.
Thank you to Coach House Books for providing Shrapnel with a media copy of Entering Sappho, which is available now for purchase at Coach House Books’ website and in bookstores across Canada.
Price: $21.95 CAD
ISBN: 9781552454183
Genre: Poetry
Pub date: October, 2020
Book Review
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November 17,
2021
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5-minute read
Jaime Silverthorn
is a Canadian poet currently based out of Toronto. Her work has been featured by the CBC, The Garden Statuary, and Cathexis Northwest Press. She has an MA in Creative Writing from University College Dublin, and is currently working on her first novel.