When Poet Meets Language

I had a chance to read chapter four of poet Eavan Boland’s memoir, Object Lessons: The Life of a Woman; The Poet in Our Time. In this part of the book, the poet grapples with the power of language and talks about how a poet’s unfamiliarity with its nebulous spokes of meaning makes it difficult to form a sense of place and mode of observing the world. I think the relationship between language and perception is fascinating. Boland speaks of the moment in a poet’s life when he or she observes this confusing power of language. For her, it was as a teenager, trying to simultaneously learn Latin and Irish, while finding head-space to write her poetry in English! She remembers being totally lost amid three distinct and apparently irreconcilable systems of meaning. Her world was colourless, since she  received, perceived, and expressed the world through very tentative language. 

 I remember feeling distinct pulls of language after my first year of university. I knew enough about Philosophy, English, Political Science, Psychology, and Religious Studies to confuse and perhaps deceive myself. The tastes of the words were unfamiliar on my tongue, their meaning still quite impenetrable for me. In second year, I began taking Creative Writing classes, and I added a French course. The language systems of meaning in my other courses conflicted with that of Creative Writing. I found it difficult to switch from one mode of meaning and expression to another. It was a time of semi-solid sentences, and the conflicting modes of meaning made my thinking foggy, my creative mind unsettled and unsure of itself.

Language reveals and conceals
 Image found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nofrills/10895361/

I agree with Boland that writers must traverse this sort of confusing wasteland early in the writing life and struggle to make sense of the many fragments of meaning. She remembers the slow (but sure) lengthening of her use and understanding of language as her knowledge base increased. As she read, her mind grappled with merging the new knowledge,  language systems, and  fragmentary meanings, to her sense of being in the world. Boland recalls how  language helped her to make poetic interactions with the world. She begins to feel at home, despite language’s obvious fallibility. When our language, and knowledge base acquired through its gate, is limited, our creative is also. 

We continuously fit new knowledge within a standing framework, establishing new points from which to observe the world. Through observing the tension, we're drawn to its fallibility mystification. For me, this happened once when I observe the conflict of meaning in Greek-English translations, and when I occasionally find it impossible to convey my ideas through oral or written means. Sometimes our language systems conflict or fail to convey meaning. Recently, I have begun to embrace the fact that language will inevitably leave us restless, but is the only vehicle by which we make sense of the world. When we harness meaning, however fragmentary,  language is our mode of placement.