This Is Just To Say: Toward a Poetics of Discovery

Abstract

The process of poetic composition shares properties of complex systems, and of endeavors in other arts and domains, including science and technology. Through a Poetics of Discovery, we can understand poetic composition as an organizational process that encourages us to suspend or transcend habitual pathways to a prematurely narrowed range of outcomes. A brief discussion through poetics and systems principles presents tools, strategies, and approaches to compositional challenges; these can be extended to numerous areas of inquiry and enterprise.