"One feels the touch of poetry, that particular tingling of poetry"

"[...] if I have to define poetry, and if I feel rather shaky about it, if I'm not to sure about it, I say something like: "Poetry is the expression of the beautiful through the medium of words artfully woven together". This definition may be good enough for a dictionary or for a textbook, but we all feel that it is rather feeble. There is something far more important–something that may encourage us to go on not only trying our hand at writing poetry, but enjoying it and feeling that we know all about it.
This is that we know what poetry is. We know it so well that we cannot define it in other words, even as we cannot define the taste of coffee, the color red or yellow, or the meaning of anger, of love, of hatred, of the sunrise, of the sunset, or of our love for our country. These things are so deep in us that they can be expressed only by those common symbols that we share. So why should we need other words?"

Ur: This craft of verse, "The riddle of poetry", Norton Lectures, 24 oktober 1967.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986).

Borges 6 föreläsningar finns utgivna både som bok och som CD. Jag rekommenderar att ta del av båda. Det är en sak att läsa föreläsningarna, att kunna gå tillbaka, läsa igen, kanske anteckna. Och en annan att ta förslagsvis en blåsig morgonpromenad med Borges oerhört elegant brutna engelska och engagerade tonläge ljudandes i hörlurarna.