Noise as the Entropy of Meaning
We live in an era of total, continuous linguistic emission. Words have ceased to be events, transforming into fuel for algorithms and the background radiation of digital space. Messages, news, comments, and automatically generated content create an environment where language loses its ontological weight. This is a profound entropy of meaning, in which every subsequent word devalues the previous one.
In this noise, we grow accustomed to perceiving language without engaging the body. We “scan” texts but do not live them. Digital speed demands quick reactions rather than reflection. We read hundreds of lines every day, yet our breathing does not change, and our hearts and spines remain indifferent. This is a problem of somatic absence. Language passes through us as if through a void, because the stream is too fast for a word to become an experience or settle into the muscles.
In such a world, poetry appears as an anachronism or even an act of sabotage. It does not try to out-shout the noise but acts more radically – it stops time. A poetic text works toward deceleration. Its task is to rip the reader out of the automatism of consumption and return to them the ability to feel the physical volume and resistance of a word. Poetry creates its own architecture of attention. If ordinary language moves horizontally, from message to message, a poem builds a vertical space. The lines accumulate tension, much like vertebrae holding an axis.
A poetic line in a digital feed has no advantages – the entire environment works against it. The algorithmic flow is designed for endless scrolling and instant reactions. Stopping here feels like a system error. That is precisely why reading poetry today requires a real act of will. A person must make an effort to linger within the bounds of a few lines, refusing to let their finger move on.
In this sense, poetry in the age of noise becomes a form of intellectual resistance. To stop at a poem amidst an endless stream means to reclaim the right to one’s own attention and one’s own heart rate, which algorithms are constantly trying to appropriate.
The Word as a Tactile Gesture
We are used to viewing language as an abstract system of signs, where a word is merely a label for an object. Yet, in poetry, language returns to its ancient, magical roots: it becomes a physical gesture. A poetic line is a touch that occurs at a distance. In that moment, language transforms into a gesture of presence – a way to let another person feel that on the other side of silence, someone is there.
When a word is chosen precisely, it acts somatically before consciousness can decode its semantics. This manifests as a sudden stiffening or a change in the rhythm of breathing – the very ascending signal we discussed in the context of somatic memory. If prose builds logical chains, poetry creates points of contact. A line becomes a meeting place for two inner rhythms: the one who drew these words out of their own silence, and the one who allowed them to change their own heartbeat.
But this touch is not always soft. Poetry does not necessarily soothe. Sometimes it works the opposite way – like a short electrical impulse that shatters the superficial equilibrium of consciousness. A precise word cuts into memory, causing a shiver or tension. If poetry is a touch, sometimes it is a touch to an open wound. That is why certain lines stay with us for years. They make experience tangible, returning to the body a memory that consciousness tried to bypass.
In this sense, poetry is an exit beyond the boundaries of pure reason into a space of interpersonal gravity. A word forces the reader’s body to recreate a micro-movement of pain or peace, rather than simply informing them about it. This is a contact that cannot be linguistically analyzed because it occurs at the level of vertical resonance.
A poetic word must not slide across consciousness as easily as an advertising slogan. It must snag on the reader’s inner scars or their silence. It is this roughness that creates the possibility of contact.
The Corporeality of Reading and Somatic Tuning
Poetry is genetically linked to the body through voice, pause, and pulsation. Even when reading from a screen, we involuntarily activate the structures of inner speech that rely on our physiology. Poetic rhythm is the overlaying of someone else’s breathing onto your own.
Sometimes this process becomes almost palpable. A person reads a line on a screen – and suddenly stops. The eyes return to a few words back, and breathing freezes for a fraction of a second. It is as if the text changes the body’s inner gravity. In such moments, we rarely think about meaning. We simply feel that the word landed precisely: exactly where and exactly how it was meant to sound.
When we enter the space of a poem, for a moment we abandon our own dynamics, beginning to think at the pace of another person. This is a special kind of intimate presence, where the author, despite physical absence, is nearby through the text’s structure of tension and release. An act of tuning occurs: language transforms both the thought and the physical posture – the way a person holds their shoulders or focuses their attention on the white space around the words.
Poetry becomes a somatic practice, working with the reader’s bodily attention as if it were a musical instrument. It is through these microscopic changes in the state of the organism that the feeling arises that the text is alive – it has its own temperature, weight, and ability to press against our inner axis.
Digital Visuality and Zones of Silence
The screen, despite its coldness and flatness, paradoxically becomes a conductor of deep somatic closeness. In the chaos of digital noise, a poetic line acts as a zone of exclusion – an island of silence where language once again finds its vertical.
The screen is simultaneously a conduit and a great simulator. It renders all texts flat. The font, the backlighting, the glass surface – all of these together negate the sense of language’s materiality. Therefore, a poetic word in a digital environment must do extra work, literally punching through this plastic. It must be heavy and rough enough for the reader to momentarily forget the touch of the cold glass. Poetry in such a context “de-virtualizes” a human being. It returns weight to the text, and to the reader – the feeling that language has a temperature and resistance.
The reader enters the text similarly to how a body enters a posture. At first, it is only a barely noticeable change in tension. Then, the rhythm of the lines organizes attention, and gradually, the text builds an inner axis around which thinking aligns itself.
Digital space annihilates distance, while poetry annihilates alienation. A line written in a moment of extreme tension in one part of the world instantly becomes a support point for someone on another continent. This is a ghostly contact: we do not see a face or hear a voice, yet we clearly feel the vector of presence.
In times when digital speed erodes our identity in a stream of identical reactions, poetry preserves the possibility of slow being. It reminds us that behind every text stands a living body that breathes and grows tired. A poem in a news feed is a stop signal that allows us to remember our own vertical.
Gesture as a Manifesto of Presence
Why does poetry remain necessary today, when there are already too many words? Because it offers a way to speak without violating the purity of silence. It leaves space around words in which the Other can breathe freely. The white page – or the empty space of a screen – is not a background decoration. It is that same void which the author and reader temporarily fill with their presence. Words merely outline its contours.
When I write poems now, I am not creating a literary product. I am performing a gesture of maintaining balance. It is an attempt to fix the state of an inner axis in the material of language so that this axis can be felt by the one who reads. A poem is a gesture that must be accepted, not a message to be decoded.
Each line is a way to touch another person across screen plastic and digital emptiness. Language becomes a sensory organ, not an instrument of manipulation. Sometimes, one precise, somatically calibrated line is enough for two experiences, separated by distance or loneliness, to momentarily find themselves in the same rhythm. In that moment, something almost imperceptible happens: inner chaos levels out. Breathing becomes more even. Poetry does not change reality instantly, but it helps a person momentarily feel their own vertical. It is from such small acts of equilibrium that true contact is made: when one consciousness transmits a bit of its stability to another.
Poetry does not gift a vertical forever. It creates it only for the duration of the reading. It is a temporary architecture – a fragile construction of pauses and a few precisely placed words. But sometimes that is enough. For a few seconds, the world receives an axis once more. And a person feels that they can hold on.
After that, the poem ends. The vertical vanishes. And it must be built again – by reading and by writing.