Meaning as process and product: hybridizing metamodern hylosemiotics with postmodern and contemporary American poetry

Zeke Shomler
Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:51:54 PDT

This thesis expands on Jason Storm’s theory of metamodern hylosemiotics by addressing contemporary American poetic strategies and their relationship to modernism and postmodernism, especially through Cole Swenson and David St. John’s definition of the “American hybrid.” In modifying Storm’s theoretical system, I offer a hybridized semiotics that locates meaning both in the information or “content” inferred through the act of reading and the related processes of interacting with the text. Through readings of poetry by John Ashbery, Terrance Hayes, Clark Coolidge, and William Stafford, I show that hybridizing semiotics is not only necessary for the consistency and viability of metamodern theory in response to the hybrid poetry we see today, but also provides a useful strategy for approaching poetry in general.