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                                          February 21, 2013

  The problem with the impulse to
  "word play", in pun or poetry.
  Is that it emphasizes the sound               pun and poetry?
  of words rather than their                    pun even poetry?
  meaning.  It's an art of
  surfaces, and since we regard
  these surfaces as arbitrary and
  meaningless, it's then a              The hole in that theory
  witless art (how poetry and           is etymological relationships
  song evades this condemnation         between words revealed by
  is another question).                 similar sounds...

  There are other verbal strategies         And perhaps, the tendency
  that may have more promise to             for the meaning of words
  them.                                     to drift to match the
                                            associations of the way
                                            that they sound.

                                                 DOUBLET

     Inversion of a familiar
     phrase can work, because
     for example, causality is
     often not so easy to
     determine. Reversing
     an association can
     point to an unusual
     insight:

       The Power of Fiction
       The Fiction of Power


     Juggling the connectors between
     phrases works similarly:

       Power in Fiction
       Power over Fiction
       Power under Fiction
       Power by Fiction



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