Why Create Poetry? Shakespeare and Sappho in conversation

Humans have sung and written poetry since at least the 3rd millennium (2000s) BCE. That's at least 4,522 years of creating poetry. Few other traditions have survived that long, which begs the question: why do we keep writing poetry?

While there is no one correct approach to answering this question, let's see what we can find about the human motivation to create poetry in the work of two poets writing 22 centuries apart: Shakespeare and Sappho. 

Note: the quotations below use Anne Carson's 2002 translation of Sappho's If not, winter. For more reading on Shakespeare's sonnets, read our quick guide to the sonnets.

1) To Express Love

Sappho: Fragment 115

to what
            O beloved bridegroom
                                    may I compare you?
                                                               to a slender sapling
                                                    most of all
                              do I compare you

Shakespeare: Excerpt from Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 
And summer's lease hath too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;

...

Analysis

Here we see that Sappho and Shakespeare both write about expressing their beloved through metaphor. Both poets decide to compare their beloveds to nature: Sappho, to a "sapling" (a young tree); Shakespeare, to a "summer's day." But the similarities are even deeper than that: in each poem, the speaker is struggling to find an object of comparison that does justice to their beloved. Thus, the speakers of the two poems love in the same way, and confront the same challenges in expressing that love through poetry.

2) To Stop Time

Sappho: Fragment 147

someone will remember us
                                    I say
                                    even in another time

Shakespeare: Excerpt from Sonnet 18

...
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare: Sonnet 65

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
    O, none, unless this miracle have might,
    That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Analysis

These three poems all convey the power of poetry to fight the negative effects of time. In time, lovers grow old, die, and are forgotten. However, poetry "lives" (Line 14, Sonnet 18) as long as humankind. Therefore, anything (or anyone) encapsulated in poetry will be eternally remembered, and, in some sense, immortal. The fear of being forgotten is, at its core, a fear of death. Writing poetry, then, allows us to defy death.