Essay Questions

Why does the author claim that Anne’s father was transfused into her blood?

Anne Killigrew was a poet born in 1960 who died at the young age of 25. Anne was a talented poet who during her short life wrote an impressive number of poems and whose talent was appreciated by other important poets of the time. The reason why the poet mentions the blood of her father is because Anne’s father was a poet as well. Henry Killigrew published poems, sermons and plays during his lifetime and he was not the only person with literary talent in the family. Anne had two more uncles from her father’s side who published either poems or plays and thus by mentioning Anne’s father the poet implies that Anne inherited her father’s talent.

Who was Sappho?

Sappho is the name given to the Greek poet that lived between 624 and 569 BC. She is one of the best known female poets of the antiquity and is considered as being one of the most talented ones. Even though not much of her work survived, she was appreciated by the antique writers and often referred to as being the tenth muse. When a female writer is compared with Sappho, it is considered that the writer in question possesses a great talent.

Explain the myth of the bees in connection with lyrical talent.

In the third stanza, the poet mentions a swarm of bees and links it with Anne’s talent. The bees settled themselves on Anne’s mouth and deposited there ‘golden dew’. The connection between bees and lyrical talent came to be in the centuries before Christ in Greece where many poets attributed their talent to bees. Many claimed that in their youth their mouths were stung by bees and that was the way their talent came to be. One of the most known poet to claim that his talent was born after being stung by a bee was Pindar. According to him, the stung of the bee made his poems be as sweet as honey.