"Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around"
About this Quote
Language, Nemerov suggests, is a genius that can’t stop improvising. The line opens like a compliment, then pivots into a kind of affectionate complaint: outside the “extreme constraints” of math and logic, words refuse to behave. They don’t stay put on their assigned task; they “spread around” - leaking connotations, dragging in memory, tone, class markers, and private associations. For a poet, that spillover isn’t a bug. It’s the whole instrument.
The phrasing matters. “Supposed to” sneaks in an invisible authority: someone, somewhere, is demanding language be purely instrumental, a clean pipeline for information. Nemerov punctures that fantasy without preaching. He grants mathematics and logic their rare success at pinning meaning down, but by calling those conditions “extreme,” he frames precision as the exception, even a kind of unnatural enclosure. Ordinary speech is porous because human thought is porous; we don’t simply denote, we implicate.
“Spreading around” is also wonderfully physical. It evokes ink bleeding on paper, gossip traveling, perfume lingering. Language is material in the social world: it migrates, contaminates, creates unintended consequences. That’s the subtext with teeth: every attempt to make words obedient - in politics, advertising, bureaucracy, even polite conversation - is haunted by what words smuggle in anyway.
Contextually, Nemerov writes from a 20th-century moment steeped in both linguistic skepticism and technocratic faith. He sides with the poets: meaning isn’t a straight line; it’s a field, and words are always trespassing.
The phrasing matters. “Supposed to” sneaks in an invisible authority: someone, somewhere, is demanding language be purely instrumental, a clean pipeline for information. Nemerov punctures that fantasy without preaching. He grants mathematics and logic their rare success at pinning meaning down, but by calling those conditions “extreme,” he frames precision as the exception, even a kind of unnatural enclosure. Ordinary speech is porous because human thought is porous; we don’t simply denote, we implicate.
“Spreading around” is also wonderfully physical. It evokes ink bleeding on paper, gossip traveling, perfume lingering. Language is material in the social world: it migrates, contaminates, creates unintended consequences. That’s the subtext with teeth: every attempt to make words obedient - in politics, advertising, bureaucracy, even polite conversation - is haunted by what words smuggle in anyway.
Contextually, Nemerov writes from a 20th-century moment steeped in both linguistic skepticism and technocratic faith. He sides with the poets: meaning isn’t a straight line; it’s a field, and words are always trespassing.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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