This thesis deals with the writing process in poetry. It consists of two types of text – theoretical and poetic. This thesis asks, for the purposes of a poetics of writing, what knowledge of language poetry requires. Questions as to the sources of poetry are resolved as questions asked of the ethics in which writing is possible. Poetry is that discourse which stands out of the bivalency of judgement, constituting, as speech does in its unending, the delay of freedom. Tropology is structure with which to represent the world, and by limitless tropology we inscribe the manner and scope of poetry’s indirection. What individuals negotiate among differends amounts to their own authenticity. The community of writing is made up of shifting personae whose roles blur between the work of making and the work of keeping the canon. Canon is to literature as langue is to parole – meta-awareness in the service of common sense. We, who make up this community, are constantly at the work of protecting and violating borders. This thesis considers the prospects for a heuristics of poetry writing by way of the affinities of that process for those of (first and foreign) language learning. It contents that poetry’s role is to do inside a language what the foreign language learner cannot help but do between languages / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 242-253).