The article deals with the phenomenon of expressive asymmetry of the original language and the language of translation in the aspect of the cognitive and discursive approach. It is proved that the translated text is a variety of the mental model of the original text objectified in a foreign language. By the example of the poems by A. Dragomoshchenko and its translation, the cases of conceptual equivalence and non-equivalence of the corresponding segments of the semantic content are under consideration.

From the positions of the cognitive and discouse approach there are considered the peculiarities of comprehension of the experimental poetic texts with the abnormalities of the lexical and semantic collocation. The specific character of the meaning in the reading process is analyzed in the light of the theory of mental spaces and conceptual integration. The iconic character of the word order and metonymy are determined as cognitive mechanisms that provide the potential of the text interpretation.

There is characterized the potential of the use of “attentional semantics” theses by L. Talmy as applied to poetry. Based on the texts by American “language poets” Ch. Bernstein and L. Hejinian there is considered the factor of contextual influence on attention shift in the process of language organization of a statement, described the strategies of language realization of contextually conditioned attention effects.