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Autopoietic structure

Structure
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A formal pattern that generates its own structure through internal rules, repetition, or recursive logic without external imposition.

Detailed Definition
Autopoietic structure describes a self-creating, self-sustaining poetic system where form and content generate each other recursively; inspired by biological autopoiesis, it implies the poem as a living organism that maintains its identity through internal processes, common in systems theory-inflected experimental poetry.
Example
Example in poetry:
Autopoietic structure: In Lyn Hejinian’s My Life, the recursive, self-referential prose blocks form an autopoietic structure—each section generates meaning through internal logic rather than external narrative.
Additional Notes
Autopoietic structure is self-generating—the poem creates its own rules and logic as it unfolds; common in postmodern or systems-based poetry.
Also Known As
Self-creating structure self-generating form autopoietic organization self-producing pattern
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