Sappho's Leap (42 page)

amen.

Both here on earth

& in the skies

every day is

Aphrodite's day.

VII. Conjuring Her

Mandarin oranges,

love apples,

honey in a jar,

last year's rose petals,

dried gardenia whose pungency

lingers in the air…

& a shred of brown paper

burned at the edges

with his secret name upon it

in heavy grease pencil,

my name, too.

Love has ignited

the edges of my life

& the honey

saturates his name

at the bottom

of the round, clear jar—

a little womb of wishes.

I have kissed the lid,

lit incense sacred

to you, my lady,

& now I wait

for him to fill

my honey jar,

if it pleases you.

It pleased you to see

Arion rescued by his lyre,

clinging to it in the stormy sea

as if it were a dolphin's back.

It pleased you that Sappho's

fragmentary verses

went to make sarcophagi

for the sacred alligators of Egypt—

thus were saved,

—a papier-mâché patchwork

quilt of poetry

spared by time.

Lady of papyri & sarcophagi,

lady of lovers' jumps,

lady of spells Scincense,

of goats & heifers

bleating to the sacrifice,

of maidens & madonnas

silently doing the same,

I bow my head

to your unending miracles—

I surrender to your power.

Some say love is a disease,

a fire in the blood that burns

every human city down.

I'll take my chances.

Before I curl

like incense to the sky,

before I study how to die,

drizzle the honey

of my wishes

on my waiting tongue…

teach me how to fly.

VIII. Sappho: a footnote

A nightingale sang

at her birth,

the same nightingale

who sang

in Keats' garden.

She tried to hold

the sky in her two arms

& failed—

as poets always fail—

& yet the effort

of their reach

is all.

She understood

that her life

was the river

that opened into the sea

of her dying.

She understood

this river flowed

in words.

Her harp

buoyed her like Arion's

as she drifted toward

the all-forgiving sea.

Most of her words

vanished. Millennia

flew by.

The goddess she worshiped,

born of the sea's pale foam,

grew younger

& more beautiful

as the words of the poet

dissolved.

All this was foretold.

Sappho burned

& Christians burned

her words.

In the Egyptian desert,

bits of papyri

held notations

of her flaming heart.

Aphrodite smiles,

remembering Sappho's words:

“If death were good,

even the gods would die.”

You who put your trust

in words when flesh decays,

know that even words

are swept away—

& what remains?

Aphrodite's smile—

the foam at her rosy feet

where the dying dolphins play.

IX. Her Power

All around the crumbling

limestone shores

of the Mediterranean

there are traces

of her power—

the queen of Cythera,

foam-footed Aphrodite,

she who makes the muses

dance together,

plaiting poppies

in her golden hair….

Temples to her capriciousness

stand everywhere

facing the sea

which is full of nereids,

dolphins, blue & gold tiles

of sunlight, Sheaves where

the moon hides between pregnancies.

I have always been drawn

to these shores

as if I knew

the goddess I worshiped

would be found

looping the ancient isles

made of limestone,

most soluble of rocks.

She took the moon on her tongue,

the silver wafer

giving a lemony light.

She watched the waves erase

her filigreed footsteps.

She is everywhere & nowhere—

provoking love in the least

recess of longing.

She is the goddess for whom

the earth continues to spin—

in her turning

all endings end

& all beginnings

begin.

E
RICA
J
ONG
is an award-winning poet, novelist, and memoirist, and one of the nation's most distinctive voices on women and sexuality. She has won many literary awards: the Bess Hokin Prize from
Poetry
magazine (also awarded to Sylvia Plath and W. S. Merwin); a National Endowment for the Arts award; the first Fernanda Pivano Award in Italy (named for the critic who introduced Ernest Hemingway, Allen Ginsberg, and Erica Jong herself to the Italian public); the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature, also it Italy; the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature; and the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence in France.

Raised by artists in the intellectual melting pot of New York's Upper West Side, Jong graduated from the High School of Music & Art and Barnard College, where she majored in writing and Italian literature. She then completed a Master's degree in eighteenth-century English literature at Columbia (1965) and began PhD studies. She first attracted serious attention as a poet, publishing her debut volume,
Fruits & Vegetables
, in 1971 and her second,
Half-Lives
, in 1973.

Also in 1973, she published the book for which she is best known. Partially drawing on Jong's early life, as well as her wild imagination,
Fear of Flying
, hailed by John Updike as the female answer to
Portnoy's Complaint
and
The Catcher in the Rye
, is about a woman trying to find herself and learn how to fly free of her repressions. Isadora Wing seeks to discover her soul and her sexuality, and in the process, she delves into erotic fantasy and experimentation, shocking many critics—but delighting readers.

While the book's explicitness inevitably drew controversy, the novel has endured because of its psychological depth and wild humor. Its heroine, Isadora Wing, whose quest for liberation and happiness struck a chord with many readers, galvanized them to change their lives. The novel gathered momentum, eventually landing on top of the
New York Times
bestseller list. It has since sold over twenty-six million copies in forty languages. It has been as beloved in Asia, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South America as in North America, and has been written about, studied, and taught in universities.

Erica Jong followed Isadora Wing through three additional novels,
How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes & Kisses
, and
Any Woman's Blues
. She has also published eight award-winning volumes of poetry and written brilliant historical fiction, like
Fanny
:
Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones
, a fantasy about what would have happened if Fielding's Tom Jones had been a woman. She has written a glittering novel about sixteenth-century Venice (where she has spent many summers),
Shylock's Daughter
or
Serenissima,
and an amazing recreation of ancient Greece, entitled
Sappho's Leap
. Her moving memoir,
Fear of Fifty,
and her writer's meditation on the craft,
Seducing the Demon
, have also been bestsellers in the United States and abroad. Her most recent publication is an anthology of women writing about the best sex they've ever had,
Sugar in my Bowl
.

Dividing her time between New York City and Weston, Connecticut, Jong lives with her husband, famed divorce attorney Ken Burrows, and a standard poodle named Belinda Barkowitz. Jong's daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, is also a writer, and the mother of Jong's three grandchildren, an eight-year-old and four-year-old twins.

Jong posing in her grandfather's portrait studio at a young age. Jong grew up in Manhattan's Upper West Side and enjoyed a childhood of music lessons, skating lessons, summer camps, and art school.

Jong at age eleven or twelve, meditating on her future as a writer—and perhaps which nail polish to try next.

Jong in her early teens at her parents' twenty-fifth anniversary party. Looking back at the photograph, Jong surmises that her mellow expression means she was likely drunk for the first time.

Jong, age sixteen, in her high school graduation picture. She attended New York's prestigious High School of Music & Art. A progressive school, it was full of passionate, talented kids and known for being racially integrated in a time when many schools were not.