Beginning from the formative influence of Marshall McLuhan on the discourses of communication studies and media studies, this essay argues for a re-examination of the importance of poetics to these discourses. This re-examination would consist of two projects: an historical assessment of McLuhan’s own use of modernist avant-garde poetics (because of the deformations and transfigurations that McLuhan visits on poetic texts); and an investigation into the relevance that contemporary poetry and poetics holds for communication studies and media studies.