logopoeia n.
a quality in poetic writing that charges words with meaning based on context and prior usage, a term introduced, along with phanopoeia (visual image) and melopoeia (sound), by Ezra Pound from Greek logopoeia, from logos "
[T]he good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning,' but that meaning is not a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.
You can hardly say 'incarnadine' without one or more of your auditors thinking of a particular line of verse. [Pound, "ABC of Reading," 1934]
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Replaced Old English scop (which survives in scoff). Used in 14c., as in classical languages, for all sorts of writers or composers of works of literature. Poète maudit, "
"Communication" will not explain poetry. I will not say that there is not always some varying degree of communication in poetry, or that poetry could exist without any communication taking place. There is room for very great individual variation in the motives of equally good individual poets; and we have the assurance of Coleridge, with the approval of Mr. Housman, that "poetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood." [T.S. Eliot, "The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism"]
updated on September 29, 2018