Date of Submission

Spring 2018

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Written Arts; Philosophy

Project Advisor 1

Norton Batkin

Project Advisor 2

Erica Kaufman

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Abstract: In this paper, I will argue that poetry allows for a kind of expression that is not found within other uses of language. This is because the poetic form is able to better lend itself to larger notions of not only truth, but also authenticity, which it achieves through the building of complex emotional engagements between a work of poetry and its audience. When discussing the authenticity of poetry, one’s personal connection to the work by way of metaphor is more truthful than the so-called literal truth one comes to when one reads something exactly as it is written—meaning that one is not searching for an interpretation beyond the words contained within a sentence. This is because metaphor lends the poetic form a contextual backbone that allows for not only the successful communication of ideas, but also the development of these aforementioned complex relationships and feelings related to and elicited by the works. Through close readings of texts by Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell, and Elisabeth Camp, we see it is the content of a metaphor contained within the form of poetry that allows for the most authentic vehicle of communication and expression; not literal reading rooted in fact. These distinctions can be divided into two separate languages, where the first language encompasses basic acquisition of words and phrases and the second language centers on meaning-making, which is characteristic of the poetic form.

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Open Access

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