Poetic Form: Sapphic Verse

There was some woman back in ancient Greece named Sappho who wrote poetry a certain way. You don’t remember her? Neither do I. But to really get a handle on rhythm in poetry, you might try writing some Sapphic verse.

The Sapphic form is made up of four-line stanzas. Strictly speaking, each of the first three lines has eleven syllables that go like this:

Line 1,2, and 3:

_ . _ . _.. _. _.

(dah di dah di dah di di dah di dah di)

The last line has five syllables and goes like this:

Line 4:

_ .. _ .

(dah di di dah di)

Let’s write an example of Sapphic form, shall we?

Love bereft a lover's embrace, disdaining

Comfort's vain rebuke, disregards the friendly

Face without a welcome, preferring rather

Solitude’s silence

Silence welcomes lovers whose love has ended

As a tree beloved for shade will welcome

Strangers who return from their travels weary,

Needful of respite

Let them rest in silence’s shady bower

Far away from passion’s inferno hidden

‘Til the fiery sunset of love’s horizon

Darkens and cools down

Let their sore hearts resting in silent darkness

Heal from passion’s angry and painful burning

Punish not with comfort, entreat no soothing

Silence will heal

Notice how the triplet beat in the middle breaks up the otherwise relentless marching feel it would otherwise have. This is the essence of using rhythm in poetry.

Let’s try another one:

Some say life is only illusion, playthings

We, existing only to please immortal

(Yet with somehow human characteristics)

Beings who scare us

Be they Hairy Thunderer, caring God or

Cosmic Muffin, deities crowding round us

Painting guilty all our meanderings and

Forcing our worship

Kind of an heretical haiku. Ah, well. Let’s do sad:

Meaningless

Overflowing wells filled with only sadness

Steal my breath and still all my worldly madness

With morosely tenderized passions laden

There all my tremblings

Ending hopes and daydreams that sorely taunt me

Knowing that my dreams only ever daunt me

Now in my futility finding that my

Thinking was just this

All I hoped and everything I said and did

When older and also when I was younger

Dust and only dust, whether any poem

I wrote was read, or

Whether anyone, enemy or lover

Or those future someones who may discover

Ever understood any word I ever

Uttered, created

Wrote upon a page, these rote verses crying

Tears that fill the swells of my sadness, dying

Words of mediocrity I displayed so

Proudly and loudly

Swirling ‘round me slowly, my apathetic

Stasis breeds a maelstrom of misspent scribbling

Drowning, inundating and smothering to

Silence eternal

Buried I forever shall be, cadaver

Over which a headstone expresses, “Here lies

Mediocrity. He wrote poems, however

None were remembered.”

My goodness! Where did that come from? Guess I’ll schedule an appointment with my therapist, or perhaps head down to the bar.

Using the Sapphic form rigidly can feel rather constricting, but if you take the lessons learned therein and apply them to your free verse, you will have gained control of the rhythm of your poetry – although there is something to be said for poetry that is out of control, too.

Bottom line: have fun. :)