9. Senseless Language

Language and reason are deeply intertwined. Words are connected through rules we call grammar. For these rules to function they must fit together coherently — they must be for the most part logical. The rules can be bent and even changed, but they cannot be completely eliminated. A language without rules could not communicate anything at all. It is because you and I agree on the rules of grammar that you can read this sentence and it has a meaning for you. We can change our agreement at any time, but we must still agree. The rules we have agreed on are the reasons why our sentences take one particular form and not another.

Within this world of rules and reasons, it is difficult to express what has no reason — what lies outside of reason entirely. In trying to express it, I try to point at something that, strictly speaking, does not make sense within language itself. For if it is outside the rules, then it is outside both language and reason, and so it is outside of what can have a sense.

And yet I still try to do this. I try to express that which goes beyond. To the extent that my senseless language does something to another person, to my reader, I succeed. I succeed even though neither they nor I can explain what is happening. I succeed even though neither they nor I know how to express what it means.

My success comes from the fact that the reader is changed. They are changed by their experience of reading the words. They are no longer the same person that they were before they encountered the text. Something has been done to them. They have been touched, modified, transformed.

A poem is nothing more (or less) than a string of words that does this, changing us in an inexplicable way, and the feeling of meaning we are left with is nothing more (or less) than the poem’s truth and beauty.