3 Weeks 4 Dreamwidth

So it's 3 Weeks 4 Dreamwidth, and I've decided to celebrate in three ways:

1. touting DW comms/challenges that I enjoy

2. prompts (quote, art, music, etc.)

3. me-stuff [meaning regular posting]


3weeks4dreamwidth is celebrating Dreamwidth's anniversary!
Come join in for fun, memes, activities, and more ♥

so without further ado...

The first prompt challenge is kalloway's Spring Renewal Prompt Fest 2024: https://spring-renewal.dreamwidth.org/

So there is a list of fic prompts, both fannish and open (any, any) for each day for the rest of April. You are supposed to post on that day, but there are 20-30 prompts per day. The good thing is that there are all kinds of prompts, song lyrics, one-word, spring-themed and not, so you can probably find something to inspire you. You have to be a member to post but just request and it'll be given. And amnesty on all prompts after May 1.

I just posted a BTS Namjin double drabble there: Pink Moon.

Prompt #1 & Poet's Corner: Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden

Prompt #1 for my celebration of 3 Weeks 4 Dreamwidth is a poem by W. H. Auden with one of the most amazing first lines ever.

Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

---

If you like it, I would definitely go to this page and you can listen to different readings of it (which is amazing) but I would recommend the reading by Ralph Fiennes (you can select with a drop down menu). It's REALLY wonderful.

https://www.thepoetryhour.com/poems/musee-des-beaux-arts

And finally, this Youtube that includes a reading with three paintings by Brueghel which is what Auden was looking at/getting inspiration from, which is also amazing.

April is National Poetry Month in the US, and on my journal I try (and fail often) to post something poetry related on Thursdays because Thursday is Verse day (and I can remember it--sometimes).

Watch on YouTube