Day 805: 3 Cheers For National Poetry Day!

Today is National Poetry Day here in Ireland and the UK.  To celebrate, I'm posting three poems (first time ever! - It'll balance out my repeated poems...) that probe the nature of what poetry is: wondrous, mysterious, magical, artful, memorable, beautiful, necessary, natural.   Enjoy.

A Poem Is A Spider Web - Charles Ghigna

A poem is a spider web
Spun with words of wonder,
Woven lace held in place
By whispers made of thunder.

 

Notes on the Art of Poetry - Dylan Thomas

I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on
in the world between the covers of books,
such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,
such staggering peace, such enormous laughter,
such and so many blinding bright lights,
splashing all over the pages
in a million bits and pieces
all of which were words, words, words,
and each of which were alive forever
in its own delight and glory and oddity and light.



Ars Poetica* - Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

                 *

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves.
Memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

                 *
A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean
But be.

*The Art of Poetry