What can be explained is not poetry.

W.B. Yeats (via bodasdesangre)

THEREFORE

What cannot be explained is poetry.

Poetry can be explained as that which cannot be explained.

Poetry can be explained, so poetry is not poetry.

WORDPLAY

(via tristn)

Now hold the goddamn phone just a minute. I’ve been mulling over this very issue for some time now, which is maybe partly why I haven’t written a word in as long. It seems to me that poetry is itself the act of explaining. Great literature and poetry transduce experience into words. We all live this world in the here and the now but relatively few people can deftly articulate that minutiae. Lay-people lazily say, “It is what it is”; such platitudes hardly pull back the drapery on the platonic puppet show, let alone scratch the surface of real experience. A good writer exposes the bleeding red underbelly you knew was there all along, but which you never had the words to describe. 

As for wordplay, hats off to Monsieur Tristan, who exposes logical fallacies that tugged at our sleeves. But then, we never had the words to describe those, either. 

(via eush)