This book attempts to establish a paradigm for the way language works - that is, means and creates meaning - in contemporary Western poetry. The «model» is developed from a rereading of Ludwig Wittgenstein's theory of language, a rereading that is complemented with Karl Kraus's conception of language creation and Paul Valéry's theories of poetry and language. The implications of the paradigm are then explored from several perspectives: the process of writing and reading, the mechanisms of language combination, the «ideational» content of its «crystallizations» (meanings), and their materiality as linguistic objects. As a result, the paradigm allows us to understand the philosophical import of poetry as a form-of-life inextricably attached to the signifying mechanisms of language.