poetry as language

I think that, and I could be wrong, poetry is language, as opposed to a construct derived from the refinement of language. Although made up of nouns and verbs, objects and phrases, words and tropes, it itself is a language. Poetry is the language of the un-expressible, a language elusive, one which we have dire need for; yet only realize its previous absence when we discover it. It gives us language to express raw emotion, a conduit to discuss that which is wordless. Poetry names the nameless, defines the indeterminable, the infinite so that it may be thought. “The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems” –from Audre Lorde’s “Poems are Not Luxuries.”