In SoM, Burke , perhaps more explicitly and cogently than in previous works we have read, plays with connections between rhetoric and poetics. Coming from a literature background, I've always been curious about such connections, and why ancient and contemporary scholars on both sides (excluding sophists of both eras)are at such pains to keep them apart. Burke makes a connection between the two in chapter 3 of SoM that seems blindingly obvious in retrospect, but perhaps was never before stated so concisely. On page 38 of SoM, Burke makes this comment about man's love of his own symbolic creation:

Man being the typically language-using species, there is for him an intrinsic delight in the sheer exercising of his distinctive characteristic (language, or symbol-using in general). This delight in itself is not addressed either to "reality" or to "the auditor." It is a delight in the internal consistency of a symbolic structure as such (in such a spinning-out-of-itself as Santayana calls the distinguishing mark of dialectics).

I have had several frustrating conversations with fellow rhetoricians about what the "point" of writing is or should be. Composition pedagogy stresses (frequently to the point of absurdity) that "everything's an argument." While I can see the merit of such a claim, especially for rhetoricians, there is a kind of valuing in such a statement that completely bypasses the above notion. Inherent in the claim that "everything's an argument" is the idea that a piece of writing or oratory is only worthwhile if its purpose and audience are well defined, if it is "pragmatic." It is this kind of claim, I believe, that separated and continues to separate, needlessly, rhetoric and poetics.

Burke goes on talk about how the internal dialectics of a piece of writing or oratory, particularly formal arguments, engender a kind of "appeal" to man, that, as stated above, have anything to do with the fact that it is "addressed." This "appeal" is what is mysterious about writing; it is possible and common for both rhetoricians and poets to argue about the mechanics of an argument or poem, but very seldom do rhetoricians discuss this mysterious "appeal." That job is best left to poets or literary critics, who are better fitted to discuss feelings.