What is Language Anyway?
Gary Snyder's words from the introduction to Beneath a Single Moon: Buddhism in Contemporary American Poetry struck a chord with me today:
"Language is not something you learn in school, it is a world you're born into. It's part of the wildness of Mind. You master your home tongue without conscious effort by the age of five. Language with its sinuous syntax is not unlike the thermal dynamics of weather systems,or energy exchanges in the food chain—completely natural and vital, part of what and who we are. Poetry is the leap off—or into—that."
