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Self-reference

Device
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 poem that refers to its own making, language, or existence as a text

Detailed Definition
Self-reference draws attention to the poem’s own making—its language, form, or act of writing—as thematic material; common in meta-poetry and postmodern traditions, it questions representation, artifice, and the limits of language, often using irony or paradox to explore how poems construct meaning and identity.
Example
Example in poetry:
Self-reference draws attention to the poem’s own making, as in Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”: “These beauteous forms… / Have not been to me / As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye”; In “Ars Poetica,” Archibald MacLeish writes: “A poem should not mean / But be”; Another: “This line is a lie— / or is it?”
Additional Notes
Self-reference draws attention to the poem’s own making—its language, form, or act of writing—as thematic material; common in meta-poetry and postmodern traditions, it questions representation and artifice.
Also Known As
Autopoetic device Meta-poetic turn Reflexive utterance Endophora Metatextuality
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