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Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Meaning and form in poetry

The communication of meaning is, along with the manipulation of form, one of the natural bounds of poetry. It is in the negotiation of these two demands, meaning and form, sense and rhythm, that poetic beauty is created. The need to communicate, the pressure of urgent speech, is what drives a poem forward into the open region of art, even when the difficulty of communication makes it dilate and digress. Without that forward pressure, poetry becomes merely a private language. - Adam Kirsch

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