In the Greek city of Lesbos, Sappho lived in an environment where women, at least of the aristocracy, lived an intense communal life of their own, one of female occasions, functions, and festivities, in which their young passionate natures were fully engaged with each other. In this setting, poetry was often used as code to relay messages to secret lovers or facilitate lesbian romances, which were otherwise near impossible to create due to rigid socio-sexual structures which tabooed and inhibited women from expressing sexual freedom. In this way, poetry was vital to women because it was their only means of facilitating lesbian relationships and practicing sexual freedom. Correspondingly, in her poem “Poetry is not a Luxury”, Audre Lorde argues…show more content… Considering that women could only communicate their feelings to one another through poetry and song, suggests that conversation surrounding these sentiments were never direct, and innately premeditated. In the creation of this type of discourse the poet or communicator was wholly reliant on the memory, to recall the features of their love interest, the time and aspects of the setting, etc. For example, Sappho speaks of moments of opportunity, recalling specific situations in which she recalls a lovers’ embrace, or laying eyes on them for the first time, etc. In “He Looks to me to be in Heaven” she states:
“He looks to me to be in heaven, that man who sits across from you and listens near you to your soft speaking, your laughing lovely: that, I vow, makes the heart leap in my breast; for watching you a moment, speech fails me, my tongue is paralysed, at once a light fire runs beneath my skin, my eyes are blinded, and my ears drumming, the sweat pours down me, and I shake all over, sallower than grass:
I feel as if I'm not far off
