small stone: january 6
Thursday, January 6, 2011 Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives....
We can train ourselves to respect our feelings, and to discipline (transpose) them into a language that matches those feelings so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream or vision, it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.
OK, I admit this essay both perplexes and exhilarates me. (It makes my head hurt a little, too. I think I'll be re-reading it a few more times.) Perhaps I'm too left-brained to understand poetry at it's deepest level, but I can appreciate truth and beauty and recognize resonance with my own memories and yearnings. When I find a poem that speaks for me, well, I feel like I've discovered a treasure.
Time for some Mary Oliver. Wild Geese & The Swan, I think.
Reader Comments (2)
That first line Elaine "Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought." Oh my, what a thing to realise, hold in your head and then be able to express.
I'm going to read the rest of the essay, but not tonight. If it makes your head hurt, then I need the clarity bought by the morning and a good night's sleep.
That line is wonderful, isn't it. The entire essay is brilliant (& perhaps more than I can grasp at this time) but these words immediately evoked an "A-ha" moment.
I have a few more links related to the essay I'll share in a follow-up comment.