Saying the Ineffable: Poetry and the Language of Silence

“The survival of poetry depends on the failure of language.”

Language is not the content of thought but the vessel into which we pour the ambivalences and contradictions of our thinking, afloat on the current of feeling and time. When the vessel becomes too small to hold what we pour into it, language spills into poetry.

In this respect, poetry serves the same function as prayer: to give shape and voice to our unspoken and often unspeakable hopes, fears, and inner tremblings — the tenderest ...