Semantic Finegrainedness and Poetic Value

Abstract

This paper – first published with Oxford University Press in 2015 – argues that poetry is constituted by a practice, which is grounded in convention-governed expectations among poets and readers. To write a poem is to engage the practice and invite (one hopes also reward) certain kinds of interests and responses among readers; to read a poem ›poetically‹, seeking its poetic value, is to deploy the relevant interests and responses thereby making appropriate demands and one hopes achieving the valued experience on offer. It is part of the poetry game that in poetry we attend to the finegrainedness of language, its textures and intricacies, its opacity, in conveying thought processes, and we find value in the experience that affords, in precedence over the more humdrum norms of communication, such as transparency, the imparting of information, and the assumption of paraphrasability.