there are some things worse than ghosts

every three weeks on the dot the voice of frank ohara comes into my head and he read me that line from having a coke with you in his 60s new york accent: and what good does all the research of the impressionists do them / when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank

“As with nature, there is something about love that remains ineffable, that stands outside or above language. This is so often where we—poets, lovers—fail–we use too many words, or too few words, or words that we think will tell someone how we feel but are ultimately unsuccessful. In love poetry, as in nature poetry, the challenge is double: even if we could see the other, how could we successfully communicate that experience? Poets are constantly gesturing towards the ineffable, arranging our words so that they make or represent something beyond human language. I often think of poetry as a medium between written language and music; it can communicate both literal linguistic meaning and something that is above that meaning, the way instrumental music communicates without accessing the means of spoken language. I see the potential in poetry to express the ineffable, as does [poet, Don] McKay: ‘Poetry comes about because language is not able to represent raw experience, yet it must.’”