Agli estremi della lingua della poesia

I discuss some senses according to which the poetic use of language can be pushed to extremes. I start from two assumptions: • there is no qualitative difference between poetic language and ordinary language; the language of poetry derives from a (particularly intensive) use of mechanisms and practices already at work in ordinary language; • there is not a single linguistic trait that characterizes the poetic use of language; rather, the language of poetry is characterized by a family, or cluster, of linguistic mechanisms. Each of these traits can be exasperated, generating different forms of ‘extreme’ usage. Two mechanisms that characterize the poetic use of language, and which seem to me to be particularly central and interesting, are: • the citational character of poetic language: in a certain sense, a poem is always (also) a quoted text, whereby the reader’s attention is directed towards aspects that are normally ‘transparent’ (phonetic form, graphic form); • the intensive use of pragmatic mechanisms analogous to Grice’s particularised conversational implicatures: the interlocutor/reader’s expectations (which are summarized in Gricean communication maxims) are deliberately violated for communicative purposes. Both these mechanisms can be taken to extremes (as has in fact happened in various practices of avant-garde and modernist experimentation).