All in the space of a poem: Spatial logics in poetry

Abstract

One of the oldest cultural practices of human societies, poetry, simultaneously responded and contributed to the evolution of human sense of spaces. Before print culture became ubiquitous, poetry was a time-art: all classic poetic techniques and devices were meant to hold a piece of verse permanently in a person’s memory, and by extension, in a community’s living history. However, contemporary poetry has little use for the chronologic dimension of poetry. The correlation of spatialized poetry with the new proliferation of ideas regarding space can be explored in multiple angles. The way space is looked at has changed in all art forms due to certain contingencies of modern history. This paper is a mapping of these alterations in the spatial turn of poetry, and a further application of ideas of space in understanding contemporary poetry.