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A review by paigeweb
Classical Women Poets by Josephine Balmer
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
5.0
“I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass.”
This Sylvia Plath quote came to mind continually while reading this book. A hundred years ago or two thousand… we are more alike than we think. It’s incredibly moving to think about these women who lived so long ago, and to read fragments of their lives in their own words. It really is a testament to the universality of human experience: Nostalgia for distant childhoods, the bitter torture of unrequited love and the sweeter tortures of love fulfilled, the sting of abandonment, the joys of female friendship, the love of mothers for daughters, the consuming grief for people who we have loved and lost. The pleading human need to be remembered in a future you’ll never get to see. God it makes me so emotional.
Josephine Balmer did beautiful justice to these forgotten voices with introductions to each poetess that included biographical information and enlightening notes on their (often misogynistic) modern reception. Absolutely recommend.
Baucis, these tears are your embers and my memorial, traces glowing in my heart, now all that we once shared has turned to ash…. Baucis, this crimson grief is tearing me in two.
Your love, Biote, was like honey, like truth, and now I’m placing a slab above your grave. Set it in stone: Euthylla took you for her lover and these tears are your memorial falling one by one for the years we have lost.
Farewell, take comfort, my darling girl.
This Sylvia Plath quote came to mind continually while reading this book. A hundred years ago or two thousand… we are more alike than we think. It’s incredibly moving to think about these women who lived so long ago, and to read fragments of their lives in their own words. It really is a testament to the universality of human experience: Nostalgia for distant childhoods, the bitter torture of unrequited love and the sweeter tortures of love fulfilled, the sting of abandonment, the joys of female friendship, the love of mothers for daughters, the consuming grief for people who we have loved and lost. The pleading human need to be remembered in a future you’ll never get to see. God it makes me so emotional.
Josephine Balmer did beautiful justice to these forgotten voices with introductions to each poetess that included biographical information and enlightening notes on their (often misogynistic) modern reception. Absolutely recommend.
Baucis, these tears are your embers and my memorial, traces glowing in my heart, now all that we once shared has turned to ash…. Baucis, this crimson grief is tearing me in two.
Your love, Biote, was like honey, like truth, and now I’m placing a slab above your grave. Set it in stone: Euthylla took you for her lover and these tears are your memorial falling one by one for the years we have lost.
Farewell, take comfort, my darling girl.