Well, what is there for me to say? What possible good could come of spilling all my soul upon these digital pages? In writing it I'd lose what I intended at first. And that is the paradox of thought to word, of expression.
One class today had me reading Kubla Kahn, Coleridge's lament of a perfect poem lost somewhere in the communication. I've lost so many things in telling. A well established point, somewhere between the image and the thing, breaks true meaning apart. This is the frustration, undeniable reality, Babel assertion of man's inability to properly name.
How frustrating a task, the word! How inevitable failure! And oh! the depths of exclamation not quite communicated in my punctually limited lamentation. After all, it's only these: ".?!,/"';(-_)=+^*~`[<{]}>" (and I quote).
Truly, none of this has come as powerfully upon me as it does when I sit in poetry circle. There my poems are read, I and others quietly-aloud, and slowly the room fills, ebbs, and sinks with the realization that much is lost in the transcription.
I sit now, reading Frank O'Hara, wondering what he means. I wonder what frustration fell upon him in the quiet hours, the "cold-thud-of-a-white-bic-pin-on-no-show-carpet-in-a-dark-room-drops-and-oh-i-hear-it-for-the-first-time-in-years-isn't-that-a-fan-oscillating-and-the-cool-warm-breeze-of-midnight" moments.
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