Introduction

For centuries, investigations into the origins of words were entwined with investigations into the origins of humanity and the cosmos. With the development of modern etymological practice in the nineteenth century, however, many cherished etymologies were shown to be impossible, and the very idea of original true meaning asserted in the etymology of etymology declared a fallacy.

Structural Linguistics and the Relationship Between Sound and Meaning

Structural linguistics later held that the relationship between sound and meaning in language was arbitrary, or unmotivated, a truth that has survived with small modification until today. On the other hand, the relationship between sound and meaning has been a prime motivator of poems, at all times throughout history.

The Life of Words

The Life of Words studies a selection of poets inhabiting our Age of the Arbitrary, whose auditory-semantic sensibilities have additionally been motivated by a historical sense of the language, troubled as it may be by claims and counterclaims of fallacy or true meaning.

Arguing that etymology activates peculiar kinds of epistemology in the modern poem, the book pays extended attention to poems by G. M. Hopkins, Anne Waldman, Ciaran Carson, and Anne Carson, and to the collected works of Geoffrey Hill, Paul Muldoon, Seamus Heaney, R. F. Langley, and J. H. Prynne.