sappho

Jacke News: Sappho, iTunes, and more

~ jackewilson ~ 2 Comments

Hello, everyone! I hope you’re finishing up your weekend well and heading into the holidays with great gusto. Here’s what to expect this week on the Jacke Blog.

First, we have some news to share! Our new podcast, The History of Literature, has been selected as a New and Noteworthy podcast on iTunes, and we’re currently listed at #14 (in the Literary Podcasts category). Not bad for our first month!

(And look out Grammar Girl… we’re coming for you!)

You can subscribe to the History of Literature on iTunes or check us out on Stitcher. Or just go to whatever podcast directory/resource you use and type in “History of Literature.” Let us know if we don’t come up!

Need a place to start? Our episode on Homer has been very popular.

On Monday we’ll release our episode on Sappho, where we take a look at a remarkable poet and the amazing society that enabled her to exist. We had our sneak previews of Sappho with our look at What Sappho Really Sounded Like and at Sappho, the Ghost Town of Western Washington.

On Wednesday I’ll be back with a special holiday episode of the Restless Mind Show. Our topic is literature and loneliness.

Also coming soon: a look at a Jacke Wilson Thanksgiving and a special tribute to Buster Keaton. A week from Monday we’ll be back with an episode on Greek Tragedy. Fun times around the Jacke Blog!

What am I thankful for? For you, readers! And for you, listeners! Yes, you! This lowly, humble podcaster (ahem, #14 on iTunes, ding ding ding ding ding, come on Jacke, stay lowly, stay humble) is very grateful for all of your views, clicks, listens, comments, emails, voicemails, and other warm wishes. As I mentioned when we started this whole thing, we are in this together. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Onward and upward!

 

Sappho’s Ghost in Western Washington

~ jackewilson ~ 1 Comment
Courtesy of WikiCommons
The Poet, as depicted on a wall in Pompeii

Hello! We’re hard at work getting ready for the Sappho episode of the History of Literature podcast, which we’ll release on Monday. Brilliant reader MAM posted this comment:

Did you know that Sappho influenced the name of what is now a ghost town in Western Washington in the late 1800’s?

Whaaaaaat!?

There was a community of people reading Sappho in Western Washington in the 1800s? Not just reading her, but naming their town after her?

I would have guessed Shakespeare or Plato. Maybe even Ovid. Dante, okay, right. The Bible, of course. Homer. Or the nineteenth-century greats: Dickens, Eliot, Austen, Trollope, Thackeray…

But Sappho? Who’d have guessed? This required more investigation!

As it turns out, the guy behind all this is exactly as you’d expect: a little crazy, a little passionate, somewhat charming, somewhat roguish.

The town [of Sappho] was founded by Martin Van Buren Lamoreux, who left St. John, Kansas in 1889 with 8 of his 10 children, his second wife and her 3 children from a prior marriage. Arriving in Seattle, some of the party settled on Lake Union, but Lamoreux, thinking that land worthless, set out for the Olympic Peninsula.

The land around Lake Union was worthless? Okay…he got that one wrong. In a pretty huge way.

But admiring Sappho? He got that one right!

Stop back on Monday to find out why!

Is This What Sappho Sounded Like?

~ jackewilson ~ 3 Comments

Next Monday on the History of Literature podcast, we’ll be taking a look at Sappho. (It’s very interesting to contrast her with her near contemporary Homer, whom we looked at last time.)

One of the great tragedies of literature is how much of Sappho we’ve lost: not just the poetry but ALL of the accompanying music.

What did Sappho sound like? We don’t know. We can’t know.

But we can guess.

Here’s one version, courtesy of youtube:

That’s Sappho’s poem set to music by Eve Beglarian, sung in ancient Greek by Andrea Goodman, who is accompanying herself on a 7-string lyre. The clip comes from a production of the New York Greek Drama Company in 1987, directed by Peter Steadman.

Beautiful? It is to me. As beautiful as Sappho’s actual songs? Alas, we’ll never know.