engine for perception

Be on guard! Don’t let your language go slack and without purpose. Let it be an engine for perception, a testing ground for truth, and a finite lens to the infinite.

—Bert Meyers during a workshop, quoted by Maurya Simon in “Fire Undressed My Bones: Remembering Poet Bert Meyers,” Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master, edited by Dana Levin and Adele Elise Williams (Unsung Masters Series, 2023)

word sounds

Let me repeat my conclusion: sounds in practical language (practical verbal thinking) don’t possess independent value, they don’t draw our attention, and we are not consciously aware of them. In poetic language (poetic verbal thinking), conversely, sounds do become the focus of our attention; they acquire independent value, and we become consciously aware of them.

[…]

Mikhail Lermontov, too, provides compelling evidence on this topic. He frequently writes of the sounds of words, separating them from their meanings. Thus, a variant of his poem “Angel” reads:

   The soul settled down amid earthly creation
   But it felt estranged in this world.
   Of one thing only it dreamed: sacred sounds,
   Their meaning it did not remember.

—L. P. Yakubinsky, On Language and Poetry (Upper West Side Philosophers, 2018), translated by Michael Eskin

reality calling

In ordinary language words call up the reality, but when language is truly poetic, the reality calls up the words.

—Joseph Joubert, Joubert: A Selection from His Thoughts (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1899), translated by Katharine Lyttelton.

mask donned

Poetic language often falsifies poetic content.