Let Yourself Be Told

In relating to language (in the poetic relating to language) listening precedes the “answer,” for it is the condition of the “answer well.” And the “answer well” by the poet, who stands face to face with the word that language speaks, is an “answer” that is accorded, that is attentive to the world and the mode it instills. Still, “letting oneself be spoken” does not go without a “letting go,” without rupture or distancing, the whole body seized and worn down, for most of us, by a shrinking world, by a threadbare language. What we need is to turn around, go the other way. There is where it has a chance to potentially grow within us.