Beyond Words

It is the poet’s conviction that certain things can only be said—or, at least, can best be said—in poetic form. The arrangement of words into rhythm and sound, the structure of verse and stanza, the semantic twists of figurative language—these pick up meanings that prose cannot grasp. Rhyme, alliteration, simile, and the rest are not just play and ornament. They dig down to human depths, reach up to the sublime, and spellbind those with ears to hear them, and they do it better than does “informational” prose on this evidence: We do not wish to put into any other words “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York,” “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan,” “Because I could not stop for death.” The magic would get lost in translation.