Sappho's Gymnasium (Paperback)

by Olga Broumas (Author), T. Begley (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Written as if by two students of Sappho in ancient times, fragments of whose work have survived, these poems offer brief, mysterious glimpses of a world beyond our ordinary reach. That world is not, however, the Lesbos of late 7th-early-6th-century B.C., but the contemporary mind, littered with broken pieces of information and language, and attenuated connections between sexuality, spirituality, poetry, feminism, metaphysics and the stones, birds, flowers, leaves, herbs and light of the actual, elusive here and now. Begley is a poet and a classicist. Broumas (Perpetua) is the author of three volumes of poetry based on the oral tradition of ancient and modern Greek poetry, and is the translator of three volumes by the surrealist Greek poet Odysseas Elytis; she has collaborated previously with poet Jane Miller (Black Holes, Black Stockings). This new collaboration is a daring extension of that earlier work. The poems read like translations from a language of ourselves that we can only begin to decipher. Their fragmentation embodies the human condition of brokenness, mortality and limitation. Yet the combined voice of the two poets also offers a prayer for healing, a hymn to the possibility of wholeness through love, through a difficult faith, and through poetry.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This unusual collaboration between two poets attempts to emulate the elliptical compression of Sappho's lyric fragments. Broumas (Perpetua, LJ 3/15/90) and performance artist/poet/translator Begley write woman-centered poems about sexual passion, desire, and violation. Some of the imagery is obvious: doors, windows, the ocean, and the body's secret interiors. Most of the time, however, the reader feels left in the dark by this poetry's cryptic dysfunction. The poems are rarely more than seven or eight lines long and read as if they were written in a dense, private code. Here is one in its entirety: "By long kill the icon is/worn a lighter color/than the rest of the face/bathing the living." A vaguely mystical, Hellenic feeling is evoked, only to dissolve into airy abstraction. Elsewhere, a reductive syntax and the repetition of words and phrases suggest Gertrude Stein's influence minus her playfulness and appreciation for the physicality of words. Even for a dedicated reader, this is extremely inaccessible poetry. For large collections only.
Christine Stenstrom, Brooklyn P.L.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press; First Edition edition (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556590717
• ISBN-13: 978-1556590719
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,603,878 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Ambiguity makes these poems difficult but more beauitful., November 8, 1998

By A Customer

I bought Sappho's Gymnasium by Olga Broumas and T Begley on the basis of the first-lines listed on Amazon.com. The easy-going spirituality I saw in them appealed to me-I thought, "This looks just right." These poems are not the poems I've been waiting for my whole life, but I'm glad I've read them.

I was writing a letter to my friend about these poems and described them as "kinda crazy, out-there." There's no punctuation, which doesn't sit well with me, but it fits with Broumas and Begley's style. These short poems are mostly strings of images with some reflection too. Connections between the images aren't made-the reader needs to make the connections for herself. But in most places it's impossible to make these connections in a way that's wholly satisfying. Sometimes it feels pleasant to let the images play themselves in my mind-it feels like my unconscious is making sense of them in a way that's vague and beautiful. Sometimes the images interact, resonate with one another, in a way that I could never describe. But other times I get frustrated, as if the writers are playing a game with meaning, and it's a game I've played before, and I don't want to play with them.

This ambiguity is obviously what the poets wanted. Everything is viewed as if through a screen or in a very hazy, bright light. There are moments of clarity that I enjoy very much. For the most part, the poems don't seem whole-they're heavily dependant on one another-but there are occasional poems that stand alone as complete. I particularly like these ones; they seem more successful.

Because of the ambiguity, this book is generally frustrating to me, but also because of the ambiguity, it's also generally a pleasure. The easy-going spirituality that attracted me to this book initially is not explored as much as I wanted, but it is an undercurrent throughout the poems, a part of that bright, hazy light.