If i taught a poetry class (which i'll never do), i wouldn't have the students give me their larval emissions to evaluate; rather, i would have each one compile their own poetry anthology, to be turned in at the end of semester. And that would be their whole grade. (The rest of the time, we would just spend talking.)


  "To a Song of Sappho, Discovered in Egypt

     And Sappho's flowers, so few,
      But roses all.

    Meleager

Jonah wept within the whale,
But you have sung these centuries
Under the brown banks of the Nile
Within a dead, dried crocodile:
So fares the learned tale.

When they embalmed the sacred beast
The Sapphic scroll was white and strong
To wrap the spices that were needed,
Its song unheard, its word unheeded,
By crocodile or priest.

The song you sang on Lesbos when
Atthis was kind or Mica sad;
The startled whale spewed Jonah wide,
From out the monster mummified
Your roses sing again.

Your roses! from the seven strands
Of the small harp whereon they grew;
The holy beast has had his pleasure,
His bellyful of Attic measure,
Under the desert sands.

Along strange winds your petals blew
In singing fragments, roses all.
The air is heavy on the Nile,
The drowsy gods drowse on the while,
As gods are wont to do."

--Leonora Speyer, ibid