Icarus

I have often taught a text set of art pieces and poems related to Icarus. These include the Brueghel painting, a Dali piece and a Matisse along with poems by Auden, Williams, Anne Sexton, and Edward Field.

What might be an interesting and diversionary nonfiction piece to include might be this piece on two BASE jumpers who died in Yosemite this spring. The writing isn't particularly moving, though there is something to be said for the unvarnished way it is written, with terse syntax almost detracting from the spectacle of the article, an interesting mirror to the idea that the NPS is also trying to keep the spectacle out of the parks.

There is, though, I think, an echoing overlap between the themes of the Icarus story in its various guises and the desire of these men to fly. I am not sure what a good prompt would be, perhaps a found poem of the article moving to a poetic retelling of the events?