An account, Korzybski old chap, of this thing of ours.

WENDELL JOHNSON SAID that "the better part of science is the language of science," and like science, poetry has a language all its own. We therefore might consider the corresponding claim, that the better part of poetry is the language of poetry. Certainly, following the lead of the brilliant philosopher of symbolic form, Susanne K. Langer, we can understand that the language of poetry can be used to express and represent thoughts, feelings, and perceptions that the language of science cannot. We can understand as well that the language of poetry can evoke aspects of human experience that no other language may be able to grasp, or even touch.

While poetry has appeared in these pages regularly over the years, we have inaugurated this feature to expand our explorations into the language of poetry, and more generally artistic expression. General semantics, being truly general, concerns all forms of meaning making, all manner of symbolic communication. Moreover, unlocking the creative potential within individuals has also been a longstanding focus of general semantics.

The name we have given to this feature, Poetry Ring, is meant to resonate with the nonlinear nature of both general semantics as a non-Aristotelian approach to language and thought, and poetry itself. And in keeping with this theme, the three poems that follow all have their origins in the nonlinear electronic environment of online communications, specifically MySpace, where you can find a thriving community of poetry bloggers (see also the IGS site on MySpace, http://www.myspace.com/generalsemantics).

The term ring also refers to websites that are linked to one another, an added connotation that is entirely appropriate in this context. Perhaps even more significantly, the word ring invokes the world of sound, and so reflects the origins of poetry as an oral medium, a form of speech and song. As such, poetry originally served a mnemonic function, as a means of preserving knowledge, and therefore can be understood as the most basic means by which humans extended the time-binding capacity of language, prior to the invention of writing. And we hope that the poems appearing in print here, whether read out loud or silently, will nonetheless ring true for the reader.

A word is not a thing,
It's a thing that is not a thing, or
It's not a thing like other things,
A word is not a thing-thing.

A thing can be many things,
This thing or that thing, one thing or the other thing,
A thing or the thing, your own thing or my thing,
Anything but a word-thing.

A thing therefore I am.
A thing-thing, not a word-thing am I.
A name is not a man or woman.
A name-thing is not me.

But a thing is not a thing, no neither.
A thing-thing is still a word-thing, I fear
I sing of things, of thing-things and word-things,
A thing, therefore, iambic or free.

Thing is, things are not what they seem.
Things are what they are not, not-things.
The thing of things resigns without a rule,
Over not-things and name-things, word-things, and thing-things too.

A thing is nothing if not a not-thing,
And words are sweet knot-things, to tangle us up.
What we say of things is not the way of things,
But the secret of things is th'-ing.

FEATURE EDITORS: LANCE STRATE AND DALE WINSLOW

LANCE STRATE *

* Lance Strate, the Executive Director of the Institute of General Semantics, is Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and President of the Media Ecology Association. He is the author of Echoes and Reflections: On Media Ecology as a Field of Study.