{"id":5621,"date":"2013-04-04T11:55:05","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T15:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/?p=5621"},"modified":"2013-04-04T11:55:05","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T15:55:05","slug":"day-4-national-poetry-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2013\/04\/day-4-national-poetry-month.html","title":{"rendered":"day 4 National Poetry Month ~"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A friend asked me what my month of poetry has to do with Buddhism, with beginner’s heart. I wanted to yell\u00a0EVERYTHING!<\/em> But I didn’t. \ud83d\ude42 Instead, I gave a rational response about the need for words when we have none, and the impact of beauty. The way poetry speaks to more than our mind. The way it connects us.<\/p>\n

In other words, I tried hard to quantify something that remains, for me, difficult to explain. I’ve told students in the past:\u00a0I may not always get a poem, but I always get poetry.\u00a0<\/em>It’s the water I swim in, I guess.<\/p>\n

When National Poetry Month arrives (finally!), I’m ecstatic. ALL MONTH I can talk about poetry. And even though I probably bore folks just as much as usual, THIS MONTH I can pretend it’s for their own good… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

So today, in honour of my exuberant love of most things poetic, you get two poems. AND the picture that inspired them. Ekphrastic poetry<\/a> —\u00a0poetry about works of art — has a long & illustrious history. And these are two of my very favourite poets: Auden & William Carlos Williams. Both writing about Peter Breughel’s Fall of Icarus, above. Enjoy!<\/p>\n

Here’s Auden, first:<\/p>\n

\n

Mus\u00e9e des Beaux Arts<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

About suffering they were never wrong,
\nThe Old Masters: how well they understood
\nIts human position; how it takes place
\nWhile someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking\u00a0 dully along;
\nHow, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
\nFor the miraculous birth, there always must be
\nChildren who did not specially want it to happen, skating
\nOn a pond at the edge of the wood:
\nThey never forgot
\nThat even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
\nAnyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
\nWhere the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
\nScratches its innocent behind on a tree.<\/p>\n

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
\nQuite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
\nHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
\nBut for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
\nAs it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
\nWater; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
\nSomething amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
\nHad somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.<\/p>\n

And here’s William Carlos Williams:<\/p>\n

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to Brueghel
\nwhen Icarus fell
\nit was spring<\/p>\n

a farmer was ploughing
\nhis field
\nthe whole pageantry<\/p>\n

of the year was
\nawake tingling
\nwith itself<\/p>\n

sweating in the sun
\nthat melted
\nthe wings’ wax<\/p>\n

unsignificantly
\noff the coast
\nthere was<\/p>\n

a splash quite unnoticed
\nthis was
\nIcarus drowning<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend asked me what my month of poetry has to do with Buddhism, with beginner’s heart. I wanted to yell\u00a0EVERYTHING! But I didn’t. \ud83d\ude42 Instead, I gave a rational response about the need for words when we have none, and the impact of beauty. The way poetry speaks to more than our mind. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[173,11,1181,481,1187,262,484,482,318,1190,483],"class_list":["post-5621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-auden","tag-beginners-heart","tag-britton-gildersleeve","tag-brueghels-fall-of-icarus","tag-buddhism","tag-buddhist-blogs","tag-fall-of-icarus","tag-musee-des-beaux-arts","tag-national-poetry-month","tag-poetry","tag-william-carlos-william"],"yoast_head":"\nday 4 National Poetry Month ~ - Beginner's Heart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A friend asked me what my month of poetry has to do with Buddhism, with beginner's heart. I wanted to yell\u00a0EVERYTHING! 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Years spent living on the margins - in places with exotic names and food shortages - have left her with a visceral response to folks \u2018without,\u2019 as well as a desire to live her Buddhism in an engaged fashion. She\u2019s a writer and a teacher, the former director of a federal non-profit for teachers who write. She believes that if we talk to each other, we can learn to love each other (but she's still learning how). And she believes in tea. 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