Music: Melissa Horn - Jag saknar dig mindre och mindre


MetaPoem

My words, they cry and they laugh and they inspire
and I twist them into the strangest meanings
expressing things that were not my intention

Though my understanding of them have grown
and I have slowly learned to wield them with better precision

I have understood to an ever increasing degree
that words

mean nothing

it is what others see in them that matters

and this I find so strange
that I can have any control over what others see in what I attempt to say
and how words take over and lead you into topics and perspectives and conversations
that one never intended to go into

Poems that become something
entirely different than
what the poet was attempting to write

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Written on 2011-10-03 at 20:37

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2011-10-10


countryfog
All very true. Dictionary definitions are like a minimalist sketch; each of us who employ words, who are engaged by the words of others, fill in the shapes and colors from our own experiences and the meanings that are informed by them.

Your last stanza is one of the joys of writing poetry, not knowing where the poem will take you. As Derek Walcott said "If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be just average."
2011-10-04



Listening to Mellssa Horn, not understanding a word, yet understanding perfectly the meaning of her songs, convinces me that you are right, words themselves mean nothing. It is their tone or implication or setting or that gives them their definition.
2011-10-04



I like this, SW! It resonates a great deal.
It's only been a few months since I started writing regularly (before April this year, other than school stuff, I'd attempted only two sonnets) and I hadn't anticipated the effect of my poetry; 'expressing things that were not my intention' indeed!
Well, I'm still a novice, but keen to learn and much assisted by this voice of experience. So, many thanks.
Applause!
2011-10-03

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