A Poem to Communicate

COMPOSING A POEM is an act of verbal communication. As a particular combination of words a poem “makes sense”; at least within its own logical system a poem is a choice, that is, it has been thought out and usually worked on. Even experimental poems that purport to defy meaning operate within a given frame of reference within which they challenge such meaning. To write poems in the concentration camps is to seek to “make sense,” it is to counter the lack of sense that the perpetrators imposed on the life of inmates. As communication, whether internal (with oneself) or addressed to an actual or imaginary “other,” a poem connotes a social field, creates a relation between an author and an implied audience, brings to life a narrator, a subject, and a narrative. From a psychological and even a biological perspective, a relation to an “other” is crucial for human health, howsoever different philosophies may define the “other” and the self's relationship to that “other.” Thus psychiatrists José Saporta and Bessel van der Kolk write: