06-26-2023, 05:34 AM
Some thoughts on the two excerpts below that hopefully will generate a bit of a discussion:
in green light on a forest floor,
refracted as the deepest sea.
and
But I wouldn’t mind ‘refracted’, as it’s a close enough concept for poetry.
When it comes to poetry, is close enough good enough? Don't get me wrong no one's perfect, but surely, if you are using a word incorrectly it should be changed—you'd want to change it, wouldn't you? Isn't Poetry the apotheosis of finding the right words? If someone had written "I looked out from the top of the Eiffel Tower over the beautiful city of Chantilly" you wouldn't justify the geographical error and go "oh well, Chantilly is only 25 minutes from Paris, it's close enough".
In my opinion there are only two ways of reading the above fragment: either you don't know what the word "refracted" means and therefore it won't make any sense, or you do know what the word "refracted" means and it makes about as much sense as if you hadn't known what it meant. It may as well be a spelling mistake. If you squint you might be able to see what they were aiming for, but it's still a mistake.
Am I right or embarrassingly wrong... discuss...
in green light on a forest floor,
refracted as the deepest sea.
and
But I wouldn’t mind ‘refracted’, as it’s a close enough concept for poetry.
When it comes to poetry, is close enough good enough? Don't get me wrong no one's perfect, but surely, if you are using a word incorrectly it should be changed—you'd want to change it, wouldn't you? Isn't Poetry the apotheosis of finding the right words? If someone had written "I looked out from the top of the Eiffel Tower over the beautiful city of Chantilly" you wouldn't justify the geographical error and go "oh well, Chantilly is only 25 minutes from Paris, it's close enough".
In my opinion there are only two ways of reading the above fragment: either you don't know what the word "refracted" means and therefore it won't make any sense, or you do know what the word "refracted" means and it makes about as much sense as if you hadn't known what it meant. It may as well be a spelling mistake. If you squint you might be able to see what they were aiming for, but it's still a mistake.
Am I right or embarrassingly wrong... discuss...