Nov
15
I Will Arrive Half an Hour Ago
Language wants to be poetry.
It wants to do more than tell. A story, it realizes, has some magic in it, but it isn't of magic. A story repeats an event (real or imagined). A poem is the event.
The actuality of a poem coursing through the human body—to the brain, the heart, the lungs—is a happening within us. The sound of language that means without telling hits us the hardest.
The play of language off the tongue and its flicking in the ear (even language that comes from the hand, chasing into the eye) is not a thing but a state of the briefest ecstasy, the smallest rush.
Of blood, of breath, of brimming.
Once a pun slips into those streams of words over words, there is a little electricity in the air. The language tells us, "I am not real.
It wants to do more than tell. A story, it realizes, has some magic in it, but it isn't of magic. A story repeats an event (real or imagined). A poem is the event.
The actuality of a poem coursing through the human body—to the brain, the heart, the lungs—is a happening within us. The sound of language that means without telling hits us the hardest.
The play of language off the tongue and its flicking in the ear (even language that comes from the hand, chasing into the eye) is not a thing but a state of the briefest ecstasy, the smallest rush.
Of blood, of breath, of brimming.
Once a pun slips into those streams of words over words, there is a little electricity in the air. The language tells us, "I am not real.
