Werner and Kaplan's (1963) theory of language development is compared to Lakoff s theory of embodiment. Werner and Kaplan anticipated the embodiment theory's use of image schemata and developed the idea in distinctive ways. Werner and Kaplan gave an inadequate account of language development, but their developmental theory offers concepts pertinent to powerful aspects of modernist poetry. The relevant concepts are (a) contradiction mimicking dynamics of conflicting or ambivalent experiences, (b) disruption of syntactic categories, (c) physiognomic apprehension, and (d) physiognomic depiction. I argue that these notions provide alternatives and supplements to analyses of poetry provided by Lakoffian theory. (Dorthe Berntsen)