Perhaps the poem is ultimately a metaphor for something unknown, its working-out a means of recovery. It may be that the retention of the absent origin is what is necessary for the continued life of the poem as inexhaustible artifact. (Though words may represent things or actions in combination they may represent something else—the unspoken, hitherto unknown unity of which the poem is the example.) Furthermore, we might say that the degree to which a poem is explained is precisely the degree to which it ceases being a poem. If nothing is left of the poem, it has become the explanation of itself, and readers of the explanation will experience only the explanation and not the poem. It is for this reason that poems must exist not only in language, but beyond it.” Mark Strand, from “Notes on the Craft of Poetry, 1978”
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 10:18:43 +0000
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