Tag: compassion

poetry appreciation

come, poor Jackself

Jan 14, 2022 #compassion, #Crews, #despair, #fear, #generosity, #Gerard Manley Hopkins, #Hopkins, #James crews, #kindness, #my own heart let me have more pity on, #self care, #self-compassion by Lucy Crispin

My therapy practice would be a lot less busy if people really knew how right it is to be self-compassionate. So many of us can pay lip service to the notion of “put on your own oxygen mask first” while not truly believing it’s “allowed” or, actually, the long-term more altruistic thing to do (in that it helps you keep in a fit state to support others). So I love this poem—a recent discovery—which expresses that sense of unease about kindness to self. Here’s James Crews’ ‘Self-Compassion‘.

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poetry appreciation

coming to America, going not so well…

Dec 9, 2021 #circumlocution, #circumlocution office, #compassion, #emptahy, #envy, #evasiveness, #fear, #form, #grace, #hatred, #immigration, #injustice, #loathing, #paranoia, #passive, #poet laureate, #power, #powerlessness, #racism, #smith, #tone, #Tracy k Smith, #USA by Lucy Crispin

And now, as the Pythons used to say, for something completely different. Yes, it’s another another arrival in America, courtesy of Tracy K Smith, a former Poet Laureate; but it’s very different from last week’s. Read ‘The United States Welcomes you‘ and shiver.

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poetry appreciation

an independent ambassador for conscience

Sep 16, 2021 #abandonment, #burke, #climate, #climate catastrophe, #compassion, #ellen hinsey, #empire, #environment, #evil, #function of poetry, #good, #hinsey, #Larkin, #moral, #Philip Larkin, #poetry, #practical criticism, #reader response, #responsibility, #war by Lucy Crispin

Here’s Ellen Hinsey on poetry: ‘Poetry is the conscience of a society… No individual poem can stop a war—that’s what diplomacy is supposed to do. But poetry is an independent ambassador for conscience: it answers to no one, it crosses borders without a passport, and it speaks the truth. That’s why… it is one of the most powerful of the arts”. Given what’s been going on in the world these last couple of weeks it feels like one of those too-apt-to-be-a-coincidence coincidences that I should meet Hinsey’s words in the same week as someone should bring to the 42 group Larkin’s ‘Homage to a Government’.

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poetry appreciation

silent watches

Jul 15, 2021 #birds, #compassion, #Edward Thomas, #good fortune, #melacholy, #nature, #night thoughts, #owl, #privilege, #The owl, #the small hours, #Thomas by Lucy Crispin

The silent watches of the night haven’t been so silent of late. I live just round the corner from a popular pub, so some of the noise has had to do with En-ger-land (glad that’s over). But a lot has been generated by some extremely vocal owls who have, I swear, taken to sitting on a windowsill very near me in order to have protracted conversations in the small hours. It’s so loud! Fortunately, it’s lovely too.

Owls seem to be one of those things lots of poets bang on about. Edward Thomas’s ‘The Owl‘ is one of my favourites.

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poetry appreciation

begin in delight…

Jul 2, 2020 #Begin in delight end in wisdom, #compassion, #delight, #empathy, #Frost, #Henley, #humour, #Hymn to the Comb-Over, #insight, #Invictus, #McNair, #mock, #mocking, #mortality, #spirit, #time, #Wesley McNair, #William Ernest Henlel, #wisdom by Lucy Crispin

End in wisdom. Yup, that’ll do. Here’s a delightful morsel which I trust will bring a smile to your lips: ‘Hymn to the Comb-Over‘ by Wesley McNair’. Doesn’t the very title brighten your day?

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poetry appreciation

the possibility of miracle

Mar 5, 2020 #Clarke, #compassion, #daffodils, #depression, #Gillian Clarke, #healing, #insane, #insanity, #madness, #miracle, #poem, #poetry, #redemption, #Schindler, #spring, #tenderness, #Wordsworth by Lucy Crispin

I’m writing this at Gladstone’s Library in North Wales. It’s St David’s Day in 3 days’ time (it’ll be in the rear view mirror by the time this goes live) and a watery nearly-spring sunshine is lifting the air outside. How fitting, then, to read ‘Miracle on St David’s Day’ by Gillian Clarke, a wonderful Welsh poet, about springs of different sorts and the magic wrought by poetry. Be moved by this lovely poem here.

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poetry appreciation, reflection

reading poems, reading us

Nov 28, 2019 #attachment, #awareness, #Bowlby, #cats, #childlessness, #compassion, #connection, #emotion, #grief, #poem, #poems, #poetry, #reader response, #reading, #self-awareness, #self-compassion, #Winnicot by Lucy Crispin

Last week we were talking about how Gilbert’s ‘Failing and Flying’ makes visible all sorts of assumptions embedded in our (Western) culture. This week, I want to think about how reading makes visible things inside ourselves, which we may or may not have been aware of. And I want to start with what I think is a remarkable poem, written by my 13 year old goddaughter. It formed the front page of a card she sent me a few weeks ago. Here it is:

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poetry appreciation, reflection

‘poetry is what makes the invisible appear’

Nov 23, 2019 #Cafavy, #compassion, #elegy, #Failing and Flying, #grief, #Ithaka, #Jack Gilbert, #loss, #love poem, #poem, #poems, #poetry, #process, #self-compassion by Lucy Crispin

Well, yes. It does. That’s one of the things that’s brilliant about it.
Think, for instance, of Jack Gilbert’s ‘Failing and Flying’, with its casual, almost conversational, opening line: ‘Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew’. In just those six words an entire culture is conjured, one where only winners matter and product always trumps process.

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