Bringing Beauty Comments

In the fourth stanza you articulate the humane, sensible, sanguine way to achieve our heart's desire. It may not be rad enough for some, who need the temperature always boiling over, who have to walk on the edge or they bored. The way of moderation or the way of excess - it's a clear choice, and not to choose means you are stuck in the slow death of the opening procession. Shelley's last, incomplete poem in terza rima portrays a similar situation with similar choices. He called it THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE but died before he could compose that title sequence. I tried teaching Shelley's poem to a high school class but they just didn't get it. If I had had a copy of your poem at that time I could have eased them into understanding the metaphor, and then gone on to Shelley. SHAWIAK + SHELLEY = THE DANCE OF LIFE. It's not the meaning which is difficult in Shelley, it's the dense poetic language, once a poem in modern poetic language opens up for them, they can make the connection.