language
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Haiku
words like winter windspirit-piercing shards of icearrows to the heart Text and image © 2013 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved. Continue reading
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Native Tongue
English is my second language. Poetry is my first. Do you want to understand me?Do you want to be understood?Engage me with symbol and simile,metaphor and ritual,evocation and allusion,the resonant, resounding play of syllables,the engaging, enriching arc of imagery. This… Continue reading
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The Border of Language
I like lurking at the border of language,where the tongue blurs, slurs with vagueness. I hover here at the brink of Eden,eager to taste my own marrow. Text and image © 2012 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved. Continue reading
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NYC, 4/25/12
This is New York City–the metropolis of big applesand miniscule elevators.Where every block speaks two dozen languages,and every cabbie relays stories of persecution and opportunity,where endless energy mingleswith curbsides of bagged, early-morning garbage. And it continues to spin–a perpetual motion… Continue reading
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A Poem
A poem:why five wordswhen three suffice? The lone, stripped pine,silhouetted against the otherwise uninterrupted horizon,carries more of methan a forest of language and imagery. Text and image © 2012 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved. Continue reading
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My Fear of Words
Sometimes I'm afraid to use words, for fear they will most certainly fail, and that what I'm trying to express–the thing I'm experiencing–will be diminished. Like this. Have I captured this experience, the fear of failing to honor the experience… Continue reading
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The Role of Words
If what you seek is truth,give up on words. All writing–all speech–is fiction,a combination of symbols arranged in arbitrary order,pointing (depending on the speaker and receiver)in any of several dozen directions. Your words are a bucket of ping-pong ballssealed in… Continue reading