And Knowing’s No Solution

There’s a tension between wanting

To know the meaning of something

And wanting to experience

The meaningless thing in itself.

When a poem’s vocabulary

Is rich with names and allusions

Suggesting precise acquaintance

With local flora and fauna,

Relishing exact species’ names

And geographical details,

The reveling’s in the language—

The more anchored in specifics,

The more the poem conjures real things,

The more library poem it is—

Not irony, parallel—

Use the rich structure of language

To emphasize, by mimicry,

The richer structure of the world.

But then there’s the contrary urge,

Which creates its own paradox.

Whitman tires of astronomy

To look in silence at the stars.

Dickinson picks an unnamed flower

Irked when, a monster with a glass

Computes the stamens in a breath,

And has her in a ‘Class.’

Who wants dry names as substitutes

For the perfect thing in itself?

But then, there’s only the pointing.

Whitman ends with the stars, nothing

More specific of stars to say.

Dickinson’s most vivid image,

In that poem, is not the nameless

Flower but the monster with a glass.

Language draws richness from language,

Not from the richness of the world.