national poetry month 6

Ludwig Van Beethoven's Return to Vienna by

Rita Dove 5 April 09 http://www.poets.org/poemADay.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beethoven.jpg

Ludwig Van Beethoven's Return to Vienna ( Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me.... The Heiligenstadt Testament )

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20618

Continued……

Three miles from my adopted city lies a village where I came to peace.The world there was a calm place, even the great Danube no more than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscapeby a girl's careless hand. Into this stillness I had been ordered to recover. The hills were gold with late summer;my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen, situated upstairs in the back of a cottage at the end of the Herrengasse. From my window I could see onto the courtyard where a linden tree twined skyward - leafy umbilicus canted toward light, warped in the very act of yearning - and I would feed on the sun as if that alone would dismantle the silence around me.

At first I raged. Then music raged in me, rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough to ease the roiling. I would stop to light a lamp, and whatever I'd missed - larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd's home-toward-evening song - rushed in, and Iwould rage again.

I am by nature a conflagration; I would rather leap than sit and be looked at.So when my proud city spread her gypsy skirts, I reentered, burning towards her greater, constant light.

Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly - I tell you, every tenderness I have ever known has been nothing but thwarted violence, an ache so permanent and deep, the lightest touch awakens it. . . . It is impossible

Ludwig Van Beethoven's Return to Vienna


Continued……

to care enough. I have returned with a second Symphony and 15 Piano Variationswhich I've named Prometheus,after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god who knew the worst sin is to take what cannot be given back.

I smile and bow, and the world is loud. And though I dare not lean in to shout Can't you see that I'm deaf? - I also cannot stop listening.

Ludwig Van Beethoven's Return to Vienna


Rita Dove

http://poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/185

Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1952. She served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995. Among her many honors are the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, the 1996 Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities and the 2006 Common Wealth Award. President Bill Clinton bestowed upon her the 1996 National Humanities Medal. Her books of poetry include American Smooth (W. W. Norton, 2004); On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), which was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Mother Love (1995); Selected Poems (1993); Grace Notes (1989); Thomas and Beulah (1986), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Museum (1983); and The Yellow House on the Corner (1980). In addition to poetry, Dove has published a book of short stories, Fifth Sunday (1985), the novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992), essays in The Poet's World and the verse drama The Darker Face of the Earth (1994). She also edited The Best American Poetry 2000. Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where she has been teaching since 1989. She was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006.

National Poetry Month is a month-long, national celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets. The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media� to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern.

National Poetry Month

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national poetry month 6

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