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JH: Your explanation is far from prosaic, nor is the translation superficial. An instance of poetry is translated into language that poetry is to the poet, yes. I agree with your idea of translation. The words in a poem are the same for the poet and for the reader, yet the language of poetry differs. Different allusions and definitions come to the mind of each of the poem's readers. Part of a poem's immortality (individual rather than cultural immortality) derives from an underscoring, an enunciation, of the incongruity of reading. Writing is a twice-over reading. The poet recognizes, wills, or hopes as poetic what is in the poet's mind, and writes in order to make it readable to a reader who would be otherwise unaware of the poem. Thus, the incongruity of reading poetry starts with writing poetry. A poem overturns language (while keeping the memory of language) by underscoring its pattern, the sound of its words, the introduction of its words (selectively: certain words; completely: the diction throughout the poem), and the introduction of its existence. The word "its" in the previous sentence both refers to "language" and to "a poem". A poem is an instance of language that does not need a person to speak it. By this, I mean a person living or recorded. JH: Your explanation is far from prosaic, nor is the translation superficial. An instance of poetry is translated into language that poetry is to the poet, yes. I agree with your idea of translation. The words in a poem are the same for the poet and for the reader, yet the language of poetry differs. Different allusions and definitions come to the mind of each of the poem's readers. Part of a poem's immortality (individual rather than cultural immortality) derives from an underscoring, an enunciation, of the incongruity of reading. Writing is a twice-over reading. The poet recognizes, wills, or hopes as poetic what is in the poet's mind, and writes in order to make it readable to a reader who would be otherwise unaware of the poem. Thus, the incongruity of reading poetry starts with writing poetry. A poem overturns language (while keeping the memory of language) by underscoring its pattern, the sound of its words, the introduction of its words (selectively: certain words; completely: the diction throughout the poem), and the introduction of its existence. The word "its" in the previous sentence both refers to "language" and to "a poem". A poem is an instance of language that does not need a person to speak it. By this, I mean a person living or recorded. A poem makes language its own. A poem makes itself into a language that closely, as in almost indistinguishably, resembles the language it is written in. If the poem overturns language by underscoring it so that attention is drawn to the lines beneath the words, is the incongruity of reading overturned in like manner?


AHB: I just want to highlight that last bit of yours, to which I think I can add nothing more:
A poem is an instance of language that does not need a person to speak it. By this, I mean a person living or recorded. A poem makes language its own. A poem makes itself into a language that closely, as in almost indistinguishably, resembles the language it is written in. If the poem overturns language by underscoring it so that attention is drawn to the lines beneath the words, is the incongruity of reading overturned in like manner?
I think we, as readers and writers, battle with the idea of a poem. How a poem differs from other writing, how it translates the immediacy of language to some vague yet essential need. I have a particular tack that I take in writing, prose with the dislocations of disjunction, to squeeze it that mundanely. You closely involve a tradition in your writing. Other writers test sound or release or whatever in their work. I mean, so many ways to write poetry exist. Yet we agree that it's all poetry, at least when we are generous. A poem makes its own language. sure enough, tho in the role of schools and partisan writing, this can be disputed. I am thrilled by the concept inside your statement that a poem makes itself into a language that closely, as in almost indistinguishably, resembles the language it is written in. poetry a sort of sidecar to the language that entails us. Is that a weird idea? An important sidecar, howsomever, but why isn't it our always language? It is our partner, tho we treat it as an adjunct or sub category. Yes, the incongruity of reading is overturned as you describe. We (readers) accept reading poems as an effort of concentration. We accept the underlying directive of words and language, as we read poetry. We realize sound exists, and the sight of lines, and the sudden diaspora of thought. It's in Moliere, isn't it, someone's realization of speaking prose. Sans effort, one does. Poetry is the realization that one reads or speaks poetry. That these calm, unabiding words all around us can transform to some intense newness.