On Language - Tumblr Posts

In Japanese, they don’t say “moon,” they say “tsuki,” which literally translates to “moon,” and I think that’s how language works.

“Like many poets, I’m in love with how the word “stanza” comes from the Italian for “room,” or more literally, a “standing place.” I love thinking about how poems consist of rooms and can stand as houses, live as meeting places. I obsess about what kind of meetings a poem can bring about—surprising ones, strange ones. […] I’d like my poems to say (to myself, to a reader): you can bring all of yourself into these rooms, including what you have yet to know about yourself, your worlds, your dreams. Your myths and questions, yes.”

— Chen Chen, from his interview with 32 poems