“Let Us Give New Names to the Stars”: F. R. Scott, Dorothy Livesay, and the Power of Poetry to Move beyond Labels

Abstract

The argument of this paper is based on the philosophical view that by changing the words and labels we use, we can discover new ways of thinking, feeling, and understanding. Lyric poets, especially during the Modernist period, often tried to convey profound ethical insights through innovative linguistic forms, an aspect that recent ethical criticism has tended to ignore. Analyzing exemplary works by two Canadian Modernist poets, I argue that an adequate appreciation of the relationship between ethics and lyric expression needs to take into account the world-disclosing potential of poetic language, i.e., the power of poetry to transcend traditional labels and to reveal aspects of the world that usually remain unexplored.