World Poetry Day

March 21, 2025

It is World Poetry Day.

It is also Bach Day. Born this day in 1685, Johann Sebastian Bach, German Baroque composer and musician (d. 1750).

Poetry and Bach on the same day! What a treat! Here is an hour and a half. Of Bach. Listen while you read wonderful poetry.

According to the UNESCO web site:

World Poetry Day celebrates one of humanity’s most treasured forms of cultural and linguistic expression and identity.

In difficult times, do not forsake the beauty and picturesque power of words to move, soothe, and comfort the soul and to stir our resolve to think and to do.

World Poetry Day is celebrated on 21 March, and was declared by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1999, “with the aim of supporting linguistic diversity through poetic expression and increasing the opportunity for endangered languages to be heard”

Ars Poetica
by Archibald MacLeish — 1892–1981

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown —
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

Heroes

These are days of heroic souls,
Standing against tide,
Swimming upstream,
Living above and beyond definition,
Out of the box,
Off the charts,
Resisting what is evil,
Persisting in righteousness,
Insisting on love, compassion, and justice,
Subject to ridicule,
Gallant heroes.

“Use your words,”
Said mother to her little child
writhing, moaning, gesturing,
growling on the floor.
Use them wisely,
sparingly,
elegantly,
clearly.
Get your word’s worth
from the words you use.