The connection between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.
My parents always liked it when I cursed in front of them. I could see the pleasure of it in their faces. It signified that I trusted them, that I was myself in front of them.
Science sees signs; Poetry, the thing signified. Co-author with his brother Julius Hare.
At long last, we may be returning to the original two-sided sense of the word virus, which originally signified either a life-giving substance or a deadly venom. Viruses are indeed exquisitely deadly, but they have provided the world with some of its most important innovations. Creation and destruction join together once more.
The poem is a structure of signifiers which absorbs and reconstitutes the signified.