A quote from R.A. York's The Poem As Utterance, a study of 19th & 20th cent. European poetry from the vantage of "pragmatics" - a branch of contemporary linguistics (Methuen, 1986). Speaking of the usefulness of same, he writes:

"it might lead to a soundly based classification of utterances, as, for example, between those which aim primarily to alter the world and those that aim primarily to effect a communion in appreciating or comprehending the world." (pp. 8-9)

Here we have another version of what Mandelstam called the future of poetic research : delving into the impulse of the text.

Look closely at this divide : doth it not faintly resemble the avant/quiet picture box?

O my peeps, there's something deep here. Vita activa, vita contemplativa. "Mary hath chosen the better part."

The Third Way reconciles both halves of this dumb-dumb rain.