I have a faith in language. It’s the ultimate achievement that we as a species have evolved so far. (I don’t mean that I think we are the only species with a language.) It’s the most flexible articulation of our experience and yet, finally, that experience is something that we cannot really articulate. We can look out and see the sunlight in those trees, but we can’t convey the full unique intimacy of that experience. That’s the other side, one of those things that makes poetry both exhilarating and painful all the time. It’s conveying both the great possibility and the thing that we can’t do.
—W. S. Merwin, The Paris Review, The Art of Poetry No. 38 (via litverve)
