from The Feeling Sonnets
49.
Some say poetry is already translation.
Thought worded, bordered and ordered. Incorrect.
The word is its own reward in poetry. It reigns over itself.
It is sovereign. The word is weird. It is foreign.
Poetry is when you don't understand the language.
When you don't understand, you stand under. You listen.
What you don't understand is poetry.
What you understand is translation.
Is that true. Or is it just poetry.
If it were true would it be just translation.
"The doubt that is not doubted is not the ever-fixed doubt."
I am reading a study of Laozi, which positions his lines as
propositions.
Is there a poetry of propositions.
Is there a poetry where words don't contradict each other.
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Eugene Ostashevsky
The Feeling Sonnets
New York Review of Books
2022
