Untitled, 10.04.11
It's a terrible thing
that only for some glorious instant
can these feelings be expressed,
with some degree of fidelity.
That a lifetime of despair,
a hundred years' worth of achings
can be distilled into a single
volume of poetry, and all
the substance of one man's life
can be made to fit
in a block of text on a page.
2 Comments:
I kind of feel the other way; I feel frustrated that no medium can adequately convey my thoughts. I feel whenever I produce art, it is merely an impression of what I had experienced.
I can commiserate with your feelings on the inadequacy of any medium to express what's alive in us. But, really, everything is an impression--poems (as well of the words that they are made of) are only impressions of our perception of the world around us, which is yet another impression. The physical world passes through the filter of our senses (which are limited to both what we are physiologically capable of seeing and what we are intellectually and emotionally prepared to see), and the artist goes to apply yet another filter to their expression of that reality by taking up the tools of whatever medium they feel moved to.
I don't think there's much of a point in feeling frustration with regards to the inadequacy of the medium. It's like complaining that our eyes are unable to see infrared light. Our vision of the world comes to us through a limited spectrum, and that is something we must accept. We can't say everything with words, but that's part of the challenge--to say as much as you can, or as little as you can, or just as much as is necessary, in just the right way, so as to give someone else a window into your experience of life.
This reminds me of another poem that I wrote, also on this blog, which addresses the issue of needing to communicate my feelings to others via poetry, and reaching out to people through writing:
http://resonancetheory.blogspot.com/2009/12/ive-loved-you-so-long.html
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