What good is poetry at a time like this? It feels right to ask this question, and at the same time to resist the range of predictable answers, such as: Poetry is useless, therein lies its freedom. Or, poetry has the power to expose ideology; gives a voice to that which has been denied a voice; serves as a call to action; consoles and counsels; keeps the spirit alive.

 All of the above answers are true, yet somehow inadequate. This is because poetry cannot be anything other than inadequate, even to itself. Where language fails, poetry begins. Poetry forces language to fail, to fall out of itself, to become something other than itself—

 A kind of topological fold or failure (called a “catastrophe” in mathematics) precedes the emergence—constitutes the emergency—of the New.  If poetry “makes language new,” then it must be defined as the translation of emergency. Even politically engaged poetry cannot escape this consequence. The abyssal language of poetry represents (translates) the motion of social change more than it does the facts of social change.

 Language is a social construct, yet it was fashioned by no one in particular. Language continues to be haunted by this “no one.” Indeed, the basic structures of language have more in common with molecular bonds than with human interactions.

 To the extent that words are things, they cannot speak. (Speaking belongs to social action.) Poetry, before taking action, listens to the speechlessness of words.

Receiver of the sender who is “no one.” (As the initial shading out of nothing, the sending of the longest amplitude—the deepest, the slowest—is always a lament.)