Episode #40

Book of the Heaven Eleven (2)

As episode #39 offered samples of my 50 catullics, so episode #40 will present examples of my 50 sapphics, another Greco-Roman poetic form that centers on the repeated use of eleven-syllable pentameters. I’ll read a melodious poem describing changes in light and shadow in a room, and then present a metaphoric use of the sun-god chariot. Varying the sun-theme, I write a sapphic about Ovid’s portrayal of the Phaeton myth as a cautionary allegory of a climate change apocalypse, then I sing an Einstein-influenced poem showing that a raisin, changed to energy, could heat New York City for a day. I conclude with poems elaborating the Sapphic theme of bisexual vision: a presentation of St. Onuphrius and then one of Dionysus.