Tags: loving of art, experience of art, writing of art, imagery, metaphor
This poem marks a change of pace. These next several poems are more strictly ones that I would consider as “loving of art”. How do we write about art that we love? How do we attempt to describe the experience, or can we even really do that with words or any type of straightforward relation of events? Try to pay attention to how these poems hold you without you actually having experienced what the poet is relating.
Not to Know How to Live
Jim Moore
All modesty is false modesty
when it comes to poems,
or to the silence
in which poems begin
before they are words,
when they are still daisies
at the foot of the dead Christ
in an anonymous painting,
13th century. Not to know how to live
is one thing, and nothing
to be ashamed of.
But not to know
how to sit in front of those daisies
with tears in my eyes:
what a waste that would be.
This is one of the most effective poems I’ve read, and it largely does so with two very strong images. We first have some daises at the foot of the dead Christ, and then we have the speaker, a poet, tearing up in a seemingly silent and peaceful manner at the beauty and sadness and other emotions evoked by this painting. We then realize that this poem is exactly the poem evoked by the first image. This creates a powerful message, as if we are being told that it’s not the writing that we should be after, but those indescribable experiences of beauty.