The World Defines The Word

With all of this discussion on poems about poetry and whatnot, I've kind of been wondering, what exactly is poetry really? What separates poetry from the rest of the written word? Is poetry more than merely words?

I have been reading Modernism and the Other in Stevens, Frost, and Moore by Andrew M. Lakritz. In it, he discusses the evolution of language and the word. In the Bible, God calls Adam to name all the creatures of the world. This gives man a sort of domination over nature using the word; it gave him the power to define the things of the world. Language was a means to not only describe the world, but to define it, to tell it what it was. Man had that power because of language. However, this is not necessarily the case. "The great disease of modernity is to have suffered the recognition that an original relation to the languages of things, and to the things themselves, is no longer possible." Lakritz asserts that nature "speaks its own language" beyond our own.

This begs the question, at least for me, does language define the world, or does the world define our language?

I think that the world influences our language more than we think. It shapes the way our words are formed and shaped. It dictates how we describe our surroundings. The written word is made beautiful with a strong understanding of nature and how it works.

I believe that Stevens shared this belief, that nature influences the written word. Nature influences poetry. His poetry is a reaction to nature, rather than a description. He is not looking to define the world, but rather to write it.

This can be seen in The Man With the Blue Guitar. The fifth stanza really screamed this out.

"Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry,
Of the torches wisping in the underground,

Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light.
There are no shadows in our sun,

Day is desire and night is sleep.
There are no shadows anywhere.

The earth, for us, is flat and bare.
There are no shadows. Poetry

Exceeding music must take the place
Of empty heaven and its hymns,

Ourselves in poetry must take their place,
Even in the chattering of your guitar."

The first line, "Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry,/ Of the torches wisping in the underground" conveys this idea perfectly. Poetry, written under the assumption that language is used to define our world, rather than vice versa, seems to hold itself on this grand pedestal. Only the beauty of poetic words can truly convey the beauty of the world which surrounds us. However, it is nothing but torches "wisping," barely making enough light within this vast cavern. It cannot possibly even begin to unveil all that the world has to hold. However, they speak of things how they are. There are no shadows for them. They do not create the world using merely words. They let the world create their poetry. They speak of things how they are. The world and the words work together.

Poetry, to me, is nature. Poetry must understand nature in order to be. Poetry and nature must work together to create something beautiful. Otherwise it is nothing but a wisping torch in a black cavern, unaware of the vastness it has yet to shine its light on.