Tag: process

poetry appreciation

triumph and honour

Jul 23, 2020 #decency, #despair, #honour, #If, #Kipling, #politics, #process, #product, #shame, #shamelessness, #solidarity, #The Second Coming, #To A Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing, #triumph, #trust, #WB Yeats, #Yeats by Lucy Crispin

I was wondering why ‘To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing‘ swam to the surface this week. Then I sat down and thought about it and wondered no longer. A poem about shamelessness? about the difficulty of honour in a time when Might is Right? Hmm, not so difficult to fathom, perhaps, after all.

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poetry appreciation

peine forte et dure

Jul 16, 2020 #acceptance, #coronavirus, #Covid 19, #Denise Levertov, #feelings, #grief, #Levertov, #mourning, #news, #pandemic, #peine forte et dure, #press, #pressing, #process, #sadness, #Talking to grief, #torture by Lucy Crispin

Apparently that’s the name for the torture whereby a board was placed on top of you and weights gradually added until the life was crushed out of you (or you made a plea in relation to the crime of which you were accused). “Pressing”, as it was also known, comes to my mind every now and then these days when I turn on the news or check out The Grauniad website and hear what the latest Thing is. I have a distinctly physical sense of another weight being added, another piece of bad news and difficulty on top of what already felt like a crushing load. Thus half an hour ago I was to be seen sitting with my forehead on the desk trying to summon the energy and will to sit upright. I’m sure this is a common experience. What works, apart from coffee, chocolate or a walk in the wood, is acknowledging to myself what I’m actually feeling; and so I give you ‘Talking to Grief‘ by Denise Levertov.

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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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