Poem: "Realia"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is from the April 7, 2015 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by LJ user Marina_bonomi.  You can read more about realia online.


"Realia"


Realia is the realm of things
which are real but not true
or true but not real.

In education it moves
the practical into the abstract,
with items from real life
used for education.

In library science it concerns
three-dimensional objects
from the outside world
which do not fit neatly into
the categories of printed material.

In translation it relates
to concepts which can be explained
but are not explicitly encoded
outside their source culture.

Reality is analog,
language is digital,
and realia is the term
for things that fall through
the crack between them.

Comments

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

+1

The last stanza makes the poem, Elisabeth. :)

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it worked for you. I was trying to find the unifying feature of the word, that defined its semantic territory as a whole, around the smaller definitions. It's one of those words about things there aren't words for. :D