Because i have no Labor Day plans I'm celebrating alone at home by doing absolutely no work. I have spent the last two days on the couch doing not much. But, tonight i made an effort to push play on a Netflix movie, a very ambitious task for a long weekend indeed.
The movie is Il Postino, an Italian film about Pablo Neruda and his postman. In one scene, the postman asks Neruda what he meant by a line in one of his poems. Neruda answers that he can't explain in words different from those he used; that when you explain it, poetry becomes banal or, in my language, beige.
How true that is. The sentiment need not apply only to poetry, but to all verbal and nonverbal communication...really to expression of any emotion in general. (Except maybe text messages.)
For example, can i explain why I love walnut cream sauce? Can i put into words the creamy, rich texture with the surprising crunch of toasted nut? Would i do it justice if i tried? Obviously, if i was able to verbalize an oral orgasm, i'd be the world's greatest poet, wouldn't i?
The same principle applies to any feeling. I can't express just how it feels to be jealous or to dread anything happening to my family or to fall in love. I don't know how to write down being proud or terrified or smitten. It escapes me exactly how my head fits onto someone else's shoulder or why i don't like funerals or what it first felt like to be drunk. Those feelings are just beyond language, but very, very visceral.
I guess that is good poetry...getting as close as one can get to putting it into words.
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1 comment:
You've a pretty poetic way of describing things, I think. Your post about the rat near mad hatter was a great example of that. Certainly there is always a gap between what the person feels and what words can express, I suppose.
Can you believe it? Those damn republicans always manage to come up with something...
Keeping you in mind, Nic
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