This is my first blog and my first entry. It is about nothing of importance. Over a billion Chinese will not give a damn about what I write.
"On "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus""
"Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" touches upon the Greek myth of the tragedy of Icarus. As we know, according to Ovid and Appolodorus, Icarus, son of Daedalus, took flight from imprisonment wearing the fragile wings his father had fashioned for him. Heedless of his father's warning to keep a middle course over the sea and avoid closeness with the sun, the soaring boy exultantly flew too close to the burning sun, which melted his wings so that Icarus hurtled to the sea and death. The death of Icarus, the poet tells us "According to Brueghel," took place in spring when the year was emerging in all its pageantry. The irony of the death of Icarus, who has always been an emblem for the poet's upward flight that ends in tragedy, is that his death goes unnoticed in the spring--a mere splash in the sea. The fear of all poets--that their passing will go "quite unnoticed"--is an old and pervasive theme. That Williams reiterates the theme is significant in the life of a poet who always felt the world had never fully recognized his accomplishments."
From Virgin and Whore: The Image of Women in the Poetry of William Carlos Williams. Copyright © 1982 by Audrey T. Rodgers
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/williams/icarus.htm
Things so important to me, if none cared about the fall of Icrus they will likely not care about what I write here.
"Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" is one of my favorite pictures. I had a print hanging in my classroom. In 30 some years teaching first through eighth grade, the students and I faced many great tragedies almost daily, but over a billion Chinese did not care.
Tragedies:
I struck out.
My best friend doesn’t like me anymore.
It scares me when women call my mom and lie about my dad.
I wasn’t invited to the party.
I didn’t make the team.
I cried at school today and my teacher was too busy to ask why.