Icarus is falling into our poetry party

April 5, 2007 in Uncategorized

This is one of my favorite poems, ever, ever. I collect poems about pieces of art (representing in linear and sequential language the spatial experience of a painting), in case you have a few cluttering your desk and want to send them my way.

Poets are in the business of finding the extraordinary, those tiny, remarkable splashes that the rest of us–farmers tilling our soil–miss.

Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

–William Carlos Williams

About Patti Digh

Patti Digh is an author, speaker, and educator who builds learning communities and gets to the heart of difficult topics. Her work over the last three decades has focused on diversity, inclusion, social justice, and living and working mindfully. She has developed diversity strategies and educational programming for major nonprofit and corporate organizations and has been a featured speaker at many national and international conferences.

4 comments to " Icarus is falling into our poetry party "


angelfeet

April 5, 2007 AT 4:46PM

That’s a beautiful, beautiful poem.

aurora fox

April 5, 2007 AT 4:59PM

ok Patti–you have started it now–I am also posting a favorite poem a day this month on my blog—thanks for the inspiration! Can this be a poetry posting campaign?

Sally

April 6, 2007 AT 9:04AM

What is it about today that brings up Icarus? The poem in the Writer’s Almanac also is about Icarus:

“Failing and Flying” by Jack Gilbert, from Refusing Heaven. © Alfred A Knopf.

Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of triumph.

terrilynn

April 6, 2007 AT 10:32AM

The WCW one is spare and lovely, but I adore the Jack Gilbert one that Sally shared.