What a Poem Can Do
Poetry is the human language that can try to say what a tree or a
rock or a river is, that is, to speak humanly for it, in both senses of
the word “for.” A poem can do so by relating the quality of an
individual human relationship to a thing, a rock or river or tree, or
simply by describing the thing as truthfully as possible. (Le Guin 2017, M16)
Ursula K. Le Guin "Deep in Admiration" in Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts of the Anthropocene, edited by Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, Nils Bubandt.. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.