Happy National Poetry Day

[comehealing]

It's National Poetry Day in the UK, so I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy National Poetry Day, not
just in the UK but to anyone who might be reading this in other countries.

May the wonder of poetry never end. And as Keats once wrote, "The poetry of earth is never dead".

I particularly love this quote by Len, it rings so true:

"Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash."

[carm]

comehealing writes:

It's National Poetry Day in the UK, so I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy National Poetry Day, not
just in the UK but to anyone who might be reading this in other countries.

Reading this thread from Canada, I offer this quote in return…

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins…

– Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800

. . . . .

And then I remember a few lines of verse LCohen had written:

I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.
If I am dumb beside your body
while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips.
it is because I hear a man climb stairs and clear his throat outside the door.

. . . . .

I stopped to listen, but he did not come. I begain again with a sense of loss. As this sense deepened I heard him again. I stopped stopping and I stopped starting, and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance. This was a strategy, and didn't work at all. Much time, years were wasted in such a minor mode. I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love. I beg for mercy. Slowly he yields. Haltingly he moves toward his throne. Reluctantly the angels grant to one another permission to sing. In a transition so delicate it cannot be marked, the court is established on beams of golden symmetry, and once again I am a singer in the lower choirs, born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and no higher.

. . . . .

comehealing writes:

May the wonder of poetry never end…

[comehealing]

I love these excerpts, thank you for sharing.

JFK's famous saying "When power corrupts, poetry cleanses" seems more timely
than ever.

The excerpt can be read here. http://www.arts.gov/about/Kennedy.html