Poetry Tuesday: My New Initiative

I've been writing about the importance of poetry recently. In fact, while trying to find something I'd written on this blog many years ago, I encountered another post making the same argument in pretty much the same terms. This is what I wrote, in January 2013:

Poetry seems to me to be the great test of a society's culture; more than anything else, the thing that separates a society from a civilization, a civilized life from an uncivilized life, a first class magazine from a second class magazine, and a liberal education from an illiberal education. Poetry is never a priority. There is always something more pressing, more amusing, more compelling, more productive. Poetry is something we can always dispense with. But even a little bit of poetry makes all the difference in the world. And even amateurish, navel-gazing, rambling poetry is better than no poetry at all.

So I decided to do something about it. I am instituting Poetry Tuesday, and hoping other people get into the act. But, even if nobody does, I hope to keep up with it myself.

What is Poetry Tuesday? The concept is as simple as can be. It's to do something poetry related every Tuesday. I suppose it could be purely private, like reading a poem or writing a poem. But I was thinking of something more public-- since we are all on the internet now, I was thinking of something like posting a poem (your own or somebody else's) on social media, or a blog, or some other platform.

But it doesn't have to be a whole poem. It can be a verse, or a line.

Nor does it have to be a primary text. It can be an appreciation, or a critique, or a reflection on poetry in general.

Pretty flexible, isn't it? Furthermore, the definition of "poetry" can be as broad as you like.

Almost at random, I am choosing an Oscar Wilde poem which I think is rather undervalued, "Requiescat":

Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.

Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.

Peace, peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.