Examining the Sapphic Stanza in Poetry

Was it so long ago that I first gently
Touched these tautly waiting and yearning, humming,
Strings, dear, clinging like a living tendril, still
Strumming in the night?

Do you yet love me now as you loved me then?
Ah, the strings are slack and the notes blurred; discord
Jolts the air and I weep. Please answer, dearest!
"Corde Amare."

* to love with passion (Latin)

The above poem was written by me in Sapphic Stanzas. When I came across it, I was unfamiliar with this type of verse and thought it was full of possibilities. Several people wrote me that it was new to them and asked me to explain it. I hope this is helpful.

I summarize parts from "Practice of Poetry" edited by Robin Behn & Chase Twichell
copywrite 1992, Sapphic Stanzas by Judith Baumel.

The stanza is based on the form that Sappho, the Greek poet used. "Greek prosody used a quantitative system based on how long the sounds of syllables are; we use
instead an accentual-syllabic system that counts stressed and unstressed syllables."
Used in English it produces a variety of effects. "Each of the lines of the poem
starts with an emphasis or boom,...and can create comic effects or haunting effects,
happy or sad." An example she gives is William Meredith's "Effort at Speech."
She points out at the beginning he works with surprise and irony. This poem can be found at:

http://www.conncoll.edu/meredith/works/volumes-of-poetry/effort.htm

She finds the fourth line of a Sapphic Stanza to be hauntingly beautiful in its rhythm.

Which brings us to the rhythm. Paintingpoet.blog has a great page on the Sapphic Stanza and rhythm. http://notesonpoetryforthepaintingpoet.blogspot.com/2009/01/essay-sapphos-legacy-toart.html
Scroll down their page and you'll find the schematic: Using X to represent stressed syllables and x to represent unstressed syllables, the schematic of the Sapphic Stanza can be noted thusly:

XxXxXxxXxXx
XxXxXxxXxXx
XxXxXxxXxXx
XxxXx or XxxXX

It also gives a sample poem in Sapphic Stanza.