Apophasis
Quick answer: Apophasis is the device of raising a subject by claiming not to mention it. Learn how this sly figure works in poetry and rhetoric, with original examples.
Apophasis is the device of bringing up a subject by declaring that you will not bring it up. 'I will not mention the money he owes half this town' mentions it perfectly well. The speaker gets the content into the room while keeping clean hands, and the Greek name, meaning 'denial' or 'speaking away', describes exactly that manoeuvre. Rhetoricians also call it paralipsis or praeteritio.
Politicians and courtroom advocates love apophasis for obvious reasons, but poets have quieter uses for it. A poem can circle a wound by listing everything it refuses to discuss, and the refusals map the wound's exact shape. The device also carries built-in irony, since every use of it is a small, knowing lie about its own intentions.
How It Works
The mechanism is misdirection with a wink. By framing information as withheld, the speaker makes it more vivid, not less, because forbidden content draws attention. An original example: 'We will not speak of the locked drawer, or the letters inside it, or the name signed at the bottom of each.' Three details arrive under cover of silence, each sharper for being smuggled.
Apophasis also manages tone. A eulogy can acknowledge a difficult truth without dwelling on it; a satire can land an accusation while parodying the speaker's own false delicacy. The audience always sees through the device, and is meant to.
Where You Will See It
Mark Antony's funeral speech in Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' is the classic case: he repeatedly declines to read Caesar's will and to stir the crowd, doing both with every refusal. Chaucer's narrators pass over scandals at length. In lyric poetry the device turns inward: many contemporary elegies name what they cannot bear to describe, and negative theology, the tradition of describing the divine only by what it is not, gives apophasis a whole mystical branch.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Decide whether your speaker is sly or wounded. A sly speaker uses apophasis as a weapon, and the poem becomes satire. A wounded speaker uses it as armour, and the poem becomes elegy: the things not spoken of are the things that hurt. Both modes work; mixing them confuses.
Structure helps. Anaphora pairs beautifully with apophasis: successive stanzas opening 'I won't talk about...' build a litany of avoidance that ends, if you want the knife, with the one thing the speaker finally cannot avoid saying.
What poets can take from this
- Make each 'refused' detail concrete; vague omissions carry no charge.
- Choose one register, sly or wounded, and hold it for the whole poem.
- Pair apophasis with repetition to build a litany of things unsaid.
- Save the truly unsayable item for last, and consider actually withholding it.
- Keep the irony light; if the speaker seems unaware of the trick, the poem reads as dishonest.
Try it yourself
Write a poem titled 'Things We Are Not Discussing at Dinner'. Every stanza names, in loving detail, one topic the family has agreed to avoid, and the poem never once breaks its own rule.
Questions
Are apophasis and paralipsis the same thing?
In most modern usage, yes: paralipsis, praeteritio and apophasis all name the trick of mentioning by refusing to mention. Some classical taxonomies draw finer lines, but for working writers the terms are interchangeable.
What is the difference between apophasis and simple omission?
Omission stays silent; the reader may never know something was left out. Apophasis advertises the omission, saying 'I will not mention X', which plants X firmly in the reader's mind. It is omission performed aloud.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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