Poetry always inspires two contradictory reactions : while some are quick to condemn its hermetic and elitist nature, others revere its emotional powers and believe it is even akin to some form of truth. Its ambiguity permeates our relations with the full gamut of contemporary creation, split between the divergent claims of consumerism, contemplation, culture and the cultural.
With its « disturbing strangeness », its touch of nonsense, its animal scent and its power to disfigure, a poem acknowledges the buzzing world and yet transforms it, ultimately recycling it into a unique expression of silence. To prepare ourselves for the heightened state of perception that it requires — which demands our readiness to grasp the language — it is not enough for us to ask ourselves how to understand poetry. Problems related to method and competence and interpretative theories are less urgent than that other question we rarely ask — but on which all the rest depends : must we understand poetry ?

Christian Doumet teaches French Literature at Université de Paris VIII. He has published poems, stories and essays on poetry and music.