"The Elder" painting by Pieter Brueghel, poems by W. H Auden and William Carlos Williams

THE PAINTING COMES TO LIFE!
This was wonderful. To see a painting on a computer and then practically see the painting come to life within the words of the poets. Each poet had a different approach to how they interpret and therefore see the poem, yet each poet met my imagination. I read the poems first, then read them again....then read them again. Finally, I read them out loud. Then, I went to see the painting and voile...triumph of the language carnival of poetry. I think that now I will always associate the poems with the painting. I wonder how many other poems expand a 2-D artwork? To see the possibilities and the stealth at which these "word artists" put to pen a stroke of paint. Just marvelous. The theme is there, the rhythm now floats from the painting as the words are read, and the moral of the story is forever burnished in my memory, well, at least until Alzheimer's sets in.
Williams' "Landscape With The Fall of Icarus" cites the farmer in the painting and ends his poem with Icarus in the water. Surely the Icarus story was first relayed by words and/or by storytelling and the poet uses his "tools" of words to set the painting into language.
Auden in "Musee des Beaux Arts" quite differently describes the scene in the painting, yet his musings about life's anecdotes and how life almost ignores the tragedy of Icarus' fate...another "language fest" for the mind to devour, with the images coming forth in our minds and seeing the painting and "hearing" the story of Icarus in our heads as we read the poem.
All are masterful creations.