The Origin of Poetry or Words and Meaning V

The origin of poetry is the love of language, of the sensual body of its rhythms and sounds, first and foremost, and, secondly, with the things it can do: mean, for example. The origin of poetry is the physical desire to dive into language and explore its hidden, its new, its surprising places. The lover's desire for the beloved who believes he will find in the body what no one has found before, pleasures no body has yielded before.

And the frustration. The other side of the origin of poetry is love's frustration, language's no, the endlessly repeated failure to do what it cannot do, wants to do, will not do. What it seems to do.

Words and Meaning IV

The waitress ends every sentence with "you know what I mean." A useful shorthand. She doesn't have to take the time to say what she means--formulate her meaning in words. She doesn't even have to know what she means; I presume she does not. She launches the opening of meaning like a trained bird which lands like a flock of butterflies or an array of snowflakes, no two the same, on your shoulder.

He launches the possibility of meaning thus in a poem: he launches perhaps meanings which you take meaningfully. Or leave empty.