poetics (n.) /pəʊˈɛtɪks/

1. Form: The study of how literature takes shape—the decisions, constraints, and cultural forces that govern a work, and the new structures writers devise when inherited models no longer suffice.
2. Contemporary practice: An inquiry into what fiction requires under conditions of fractured attention and pervasive automated text—clarifying which elements of storytelling depend on human intention, and how writers might build forms that safeguard it.