Performativity and Sapphic Identity in the 20th Century White American Poetry

This article explores Sapphic identity in twentieth-century white American lesbian poetry by focusing on the performative role of poetry and its reflections in some selected poems. It examines the social effects on this identity by emphasizing how they are reflected in poetry. The article aims to demonstrate how Sappho's notion of identity evolved into social action in the twentieth century through poems chosen by Judy Grahn and Rita Mae Brown based on social and political reflections of Sapphic identity and poems chosen by Ellen Bass and Elsa Gidlow based on physical depictions and erotic reflections of Sapphic identity. In this process, the theory of performativity suggested by Judith Butler will also be helpful in order to enhance the discussion of Sapphic identity in poems of white lesbian poets. Lastly, this article aims to explain how identity transforms into social action through the performative role of poetry.