The Finland of Poetry Revisited Four Snapshots

A poem is a condensation of signs and a method characteristic of every human being for investigating a shared reality. Accordingly, a human being also lives and exists poetically in this common world. This being so, the primacy of the mother tongue refers to the lived language, which mediates the possibility for us of carving out our own unique imprint on existence. Similarly, the native land signifies a milieu where a human being takes on a reality amidst other objects, surrounded by them and as one of them. Poetry creates harmony between past and present.