From Oars to Oracles: Sarah Beckmann’s The Race for Daphne

The Manchester native's new collection of poetry blends Greek mythology, motherhood, and modern womanhood.

Posted Friday, January 23, 2026 10:59 am

By Erika Brown

Poet and Manchester native Sarah Beckmann has released a second collection of poetry, The Race for Daphne, published by Finishing Line Press.

The new collection follows Beckmann’s 2021 publishing debut, Naiad Blood, in which she explored life, especially life on the water, doing what she loves—rowing.

In The Race for Daphne, Beckmann’s love of the sport of rowing remains an orienting theme, but this time she expands out into the world. She evokes Greek mythology—the character of Daphne in Greek mythology was a beautiful nymph, the daughter of a river god known for her fierce independence—genealogy, and feminism. It celebrates what it means to be loved, investigates the idea of home, and questions the home that American women currently inhabit.

Indeed, according to the publisher, Beckmann’s poems in Daphne examine the “interplay between the visible and the hidden,” as the speaker—described as both mother and ghost—reckons with loss, love, and longing in the digital age.

Beckmann’s ability to knit together the past, the present, the mystical, and the personal is pretty extraordinary. In the poem Medusa with the Head of Perseus, she uses a current news event—a traveling protest statue in New York City by Luciano Garbarti that flipped the script on Benvenuto Cellini's 16th-century masterpiece scupture—to soulfully express the paradox of female power and beauty. In this 21^st Century version, it is Medusa who is victorious, carrying the head of Perseus in one hand, his sword in the other. Beckmann takes this idea, and pulls it into today by evoking the promise of America as she channels the voice of the hero Medusa.

… that’s the real me—

my gaze wreaks stone, and to stone I stand.

One fist grips his hair; the other, his sword.

My stance, wide, snakes swept to one side,

shoulders back and chin down, daring you

with my eyes to look.

Don’t be afraid. When they say my name

you hear monster—you can’t tear

your eyes away—can you?—look on,

and know my version of the tale. Give me

your weary, your broken, your abandoned

and idol-less; Hercules and Theseus can come

at their own risk. I’m a sister to exiles, mother

of the She. All I ask is

who are the heroes now

A graduate of Manchester Essex Regional High School, Beckmann holds an MFA in Poetry from Emerson College. She also works in research communications at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge.

The Race for Daphne is available now through Finishing Line Press and will be officially released on May 8 this year. Beckmann is planning a reading from The Race for Daphne later this year at the Manchester Public Library.