WITTGENSTEIN'S LADDER: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary.

By Marjorie Perloff. University of Chicago Press. 285 pp. $27.95

"What is it about this man, whose philosophy can be taxing and technical enough, that so fascinates the artistic imagination?" The words are critic Terry Eagleton's, but the question is Marjorie Perloff's. Professor of humanities at Stanford University and an authority on artistic modernism, Perloff finds a striking affinity between the philosophical practice of Ludwig Wittgenstein (especially late in his career) and the poetic practice of certain 20th-century avant-garde writers.

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