Most people say that the purpose of poetry is communication: that sounds as if one could be contented simply by telling somebody whatever it is one has noticed, felt or perceived. I feel it is a kind of permanent communication better called preservation, since one’s deepest impulse in writing (or, I must admit, painting or composing) is to my mind not 'I must tell everybody about that' (i.e. responsibility to other people) but 'I must stop that from being forgotten if I can' (i.e. responsibility towards subject). . . . Of course, the process of preservation does imply communication, since that is the only way an experience can be preserved, and that explains why obscurity is so often a disadvantage; the distinction between communication and preservation is one of motive, and I think the latter word gives a very proper emphasis to the language-as-preserver rather than language-as-means-of-communication. In other words it makes it sound harder, which it is!
—Philip Larkin
Knowing and knowing how (Riggs)
Just because they knew it was lost didn't mean they knew how to let it go.
Ransom Riggs, Hollow City
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