The poetess describes an experience that occurred in her mind. Language is necessary to describe that experience, but language gets in the way of describing that experience. The first words on the page are an injustice to the phenomenological event. Processing and analyzing the occurrence, the poetess seeks to deliver to the reader an approximation of what occurred in the her mind. To recreate the moment precisely and place the experience exactly in the mind of the reader is impossible. To describe the moment scientifically excludes the range of human history and emotion. The moment was more than an electrical connection between synapses. Furthermore, every time the poetess tries to enrich the description through editing, by holding the moment in different light and at different angles, she no longer looks at the original event.
Such is the work of the poetess. “Human existence is a dialogue with the world, and the more reverent activity is to listen rather than to speak (Eagleton 54).” But listening doesn’t mean understanding. I will generalize (I think correctly) and say that few people listen to their existence, at least on a regular basis. Of course, trauma causes all humans to pause. Out of the small group who reflect at times not dire, a handful engages in occasional conversation with themselves. Still fewer create a conversation with the rest of us. The challenge for the prophet/poetess is to render experience through enlightened language for us to comprehend human existence. Reification may be artificial, but it is necessary.
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