Alana Locke

Willis Barnstone, The Complete Poems of Sappho, Shambhala Press

Writes Alana Locke (for Professor Norrie Epstein’s Literary Traditions):

For this work, I decided to use watercolor and gouache with details done in colored pencil. I thought these mediums could create the dreamy, soft qualities of the poem. Sappho uses words such as “luminous” and “shine,” so I tried to make a glowy effect around the moon. I decided to put on the face on the moon to personify it as Sappho did. The phrase “when in her fullness she shines” conjured the image of the moon smiling in my mind. I decided to add a figure sitting on a cliff to interact with the moon.

Is the figure Sappho writing about the moon? Does the figure see their love’s face on the moon? Is the figure in love with the moon itself?