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The Power of the Vulnerable Body: From Sappho to Erin Belieu

Roland Barthes wrote that “To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive (by the limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive submersion) and impoverished (by the codes on which love diminishes and levels it)” (99). In much the same way, to try to write the body in terms of power is to confront the tensions of supremacy over the body where there is located both a type of “too much” (an excessive amount of authority granted to the beloved) as well as a “too little” (a vulnerability felt in the lover who gives the rule of his body to the beloved). However, Sappho’s poems,1 specifically “LP 1,” “LP 16,” and “LP 31,” and two poems, “Prayer for Men” and “Erections” by contemporary poet Erin Belieu,2 do not only confront that “muck” of power dynamics, but they also argue that the apparent opposition of dominance and weakness does not necessarily have to be located in exclusive and opposing bodies. In fact, as these poets show, the ideas of a “too much” and “too little” can exist in one space and reveal how the same vulnerable body can also be the body of power. Although Sappho and Belieu appear to be strikingly different in terms of time periods, literary concerns, and poetic perspectives, what these two poets share is a desire to approach their poems through the discourse of power (specifically that of male power) and then engage, master, redefine, and finally provide that