Monday, April 14, 2014

Poem Response to "Musee des Beaux Arts" by W.H. Auden


Auden starts his poem off with an almost story like tone. It has a bit of nonchalance to it’s wording.  It speaks of how the masters (of painting I presume) were spot on about their subject matter.  Auden implies that many people go through their life time waiting for something spectacular to happen.  How children don’t really want something like that to happen.  How life keeps on pressing forward.  In the last block Auden refers’ to Breughel’s painting of Icarus.  Something fantastic happened, but in the end everyone was so busy with their own lives that they barely pay the event any mind. 

  I like this poem as a thought experiment.  It feels to me that Auden was making a comment on how people get so wrapped up in their own things that it hardly registers when something exciting comes along.  It makes me wonder how much that is true, even in this modern age.

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