World Poetry, without Baedeker: The Very Idea

Abstract

"World poetics is about how different versions of what poetry is, or has been, lead to new visions of what poetry can be. World poetry draws upon particular poetries without idealizing any particular poetic language or tradition. To be a world poet, or to become one, is to participate directly in the universal function of poetry and to perform directly and singularly in front of the world audience, to “leap” out of one’s particular linguistic and national identity in order to participate directly in the transcultural and transnational universality of poetic making and unmaking. This may be the only way to break out of Eurocentrism or any other ethnocentrisms."