Posted by jonvon on November 10, 2002 at 12:17:07:
In Reply to: Oboy now you've reeeaaallly offended me! posted by kat on November 10, 2002 at 10:31:17:
: *It feels like poetry becasue it's so foreign, when you are writing you are trying to express feelings and if you just write grammatically correct poetry it's boring and it sounds like a greeting card. what you are looking for is something that will capture the attention of the listeners. It has to be your own language that you make up . In essense it's foreign even to you.
: Hebrew is foreign, Aramaic is foreign, Greek is foreign, <---their way of thinking was different, no wonder it doesn't make much sense when literally translated.
: But you are right, to get a true understanding you have know the languages, or you have to do a lot of painstaking research, i dont' have that kind of time.
: *Remember Engrish? Even English sounds like poetry to the oriental people.
i think you have a point here, its kinda interesting. i wasn't thinking much along these lines.
i'm really more speaking from the perspective of someone who has some sort of strange inherent or congenital grasp on language. i've been reading some poetry lately by pablo neruda. the original spanish is there next to the english translation in the book i'm reading. sometimes when the poem doesn't quite feel right i'll read through the spanish, even though i don't really know most of the words or the grammar. its been 20 years since i studied spanish, i've forgotten most of it. but i can feel the structure of the poem in the original language without even understanding it. i can feel it as a poet. i can feel its "poeticalness", sorta-like, in the way the words are strung together. i had this same experience when i read that thing that steve posted. i don't know whether the original thing that steve posted would be classified as poetry. i don't know if i read it in the original hebrew with the correct pronunciation and all, if it would still feel like poetry. but what he posted was poetic. to me anyway. i'm speaking strictly as a guy who can feel the structure of language. its a personal interpretation of course.
: *it's always clouded, you have to dig you have to remove the veil off your eyes.
yeah, but this isn't really the vibe i'm digging around in. i'm not talking about inspired knowledge per se. i'm talking about the structure of the language. i'm talking about a finer truth. i'm talking about something that i'm not really sure what i'm talking about, its a strong feeling i have. i'm talking about seeing whatever is there in a more naked form. in this sense there is a veil in the english translations.
: "Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone, I hear you call my name and it feels like home"
: -guess
ok, i looked it up on google. :-) shakira, but i have no idea who that is.