When I pant, "What now?" with my big ear to the door
of your body as in a cup filled with listening (pregnable),
and the tremble rides my whiskied vowel, what your body is
runs down my thickness ruinously and sweetly.
—from "Twenty Measures of Chitchat" by Terrance Hayes
I seem to understand each individual word but together they make little sense O_o.
ReplyDeleteTo understand poetry you need to think in abstract, right? I understand Russian poetry that way but English just doesn't connect for some reason.
I'm not sure what I'm getting at here, hold on. Maybe I just don't have some kind of innate deep understanding of the language that people who are born in it have?
Maybe it's a thing that you can't intellectually learn. O_o
I don't know what to tell you. It might be that you need English as your first language to really get our poetry. But every poem speaks to every person differently, and every poet speaks to every person differently. It might be Terrance Hayes isn't a poet that speaks to you.
ReplyDeleteSome poetry connects with you, makes you feel something, resonates, and you don't always know why, why those particular words in that particular order made you feel that way.