Sappho's Leap

Erica Jong, the acclaimed author of Fear of Flying, transports the reader more than twenty-six hundred years back to a time of myths, gods, and monsters, bringing glorious life to the renowned, seductive poet SapphoAs she stands poised at the edge of a precipice in the shadow of the sanctuary of Apollo, the greatest love poet who ever was or ever will be recalls the eventful fifty years that have led her to this moment. It was love that seduced her, at age sixteen, into an ill-fated plot with the poet Alcaeus to depose the despot of the island of Lesbos. It was love that made her trade the unwanted marriage bed of an old, despised, and drunken husband for a seemingly endless series of lovers, both male and female.For Sappho, life has always been a banquet to be savored to the fullest, a strange and sensual odyssey that has carried her to the far corners of the ancient world. Devoted to the goddess Aphrodite and granted the gift of immortal song, she has followed her magnificent...