Poetry
From MetaforasWiki
| Foundations | Structure | Metafora | Inflection | Return to Metaforas.org |
The meaning we can convey purely through the literal meaning of words can be limiting: words are no more than signifiers and labels. But poetry, which arises out of our expression of desire, is our most non-objective use of words. Anthropologists think that poetry began with the growth of agrarian society in the form of ritual or magic, to make the connection with some spiritual realm outside of everyday existence. Hence, the divine nature of the word. What is poetry? Is it not the beginning of the creative use of words in the evocation of concept and feeling, the expression of that which we do not know, or cannot know? It is not about equating identity to things, but thinking about them imaginatively. Perhaps we developed poetry because of the limits of language and of the representational qualities of words.
I wear the color of my skin
like a brown paper bag
wrapped around a bottle.
Sleeping between
the pages of dictionaries
your language cuts
tears holes in my tongue
until I do not have strength
to use the word "love."
What could it mean
in this city where everyone is
Afraid-of-Horses?
- Sherman Alexie (American author, born 1966), Crazy Horse Speaks
Anyone who calls a spade a spade
Ought to be forced to use one.
- Oscar Wilde (Irish-born writer, 1854-1900)
A sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse,
A difficult path is this—poets declare!
- Katha Upanishad
Poetry is undergoing an experience with language.
- Luigi Ballerini (Italian poet, born 1940)
