POETRY

You are stuck in lockdown, some time on your hands, getting square eyes from playing video games or binge-watching TV series... Why not take a break and READ ALOUD a few poems?

Christina's World, by Andrew Wyeth (1948)

Emily Dickinson (1830-86), the reclusive American poet, seems like a good choice considering the circumstances. Unknown during her lifetime, she became posthumously famous for her innovative use of form and syntax, and for the paradoxical content of her poems, which have had a great influence on contemporary works.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45706/i-felt-a-funeral-in-my-brain-340

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, (340)

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading - treading - till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum -

Kept beating - beating - till I thought

My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race,

Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing - then -

- Walt Whitman (1819-92), another American poet, who became famous for his controversial collection of poems Leaves of Grass, described as obscene for its overt sensuality in a puritan America, but whose works has been most influential as well.https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this

air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their

parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

(…)

William Blake (1757-1827), an English poet, unrecognized during his lifetime, now a seminal figure in the history of poetry and illustration of the Romantic Age. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43650/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.(...)