In a world that seems increasingly like it’s gone completely mad, a day set aside to remember poetry sounds eminently sane. Perhaps more than any form of writing, poetry highlights the power of the written word to mediate a meeting of minds that may span centuries, and transcend barriers of culture, language and place, reminding us of our common humanity and of our universal need and capacity for truth, goodness and beauty. Check out the details here, and be sure to read (if not write) some good poetry on March 21st.
In honour of World Poetry Day, here are 17 of the most powerful excerpts from poetry… according to the ‘Writers Write’ group. Please feel free to add any you think should be on this list! 🙂
http://writerswrite.co.za/17-of-the-most-powerful-excerpts-from-poetry
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Totally agree with the extract from Yeats’ The Second Coming.
Would also have to include Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty:
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
As well as William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
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