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Poetics, as I said on the mailbase, I take to be a speculative discourse, intermittent in its delivery, that can be found at the heart of other discourses. (Actually I didn't say any of this; this is something new). Like Barthes detecting bliss it can be a moment inside Lit Crit, the work itself, as well as in formally identifiable essays on poetics. Whereas Aesthetics has asked: What is beauty,sublime, etc, Poetics has asked: How is it made? How may we make? How might we make? I don't see the moral advantage of any supposedly exclusively anterior view for poetics: indeed, the development of art and style and criticism, against whuich its pronouncements may be judged, leaves it open to subsequent questioning. But yes criticism could "understand poetics" which woiuld be like Barthes (again) saying that the untheoretical don't understand theory but IT understands them. Yes, I recognise that as danger. It must be a critical dsicpline. I don't think it is simple self-reflection. (This is q1uite practical for me: getting students to articulate a poetic, instead of offering a creative writing commentary. We call it Writing Studies anyway!) I think the opposition isn't strictly there. Poetics was there first: Sidney, Shelley, Poe (the philosophy of composition sums it up as a title for me). Those texts are often thought of as founding moments of Lit Crit. I'd like to go back there and find another speculative discourse on poiesis. Robert %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%