A World of Gestures

Abstract The lyric poem does not construct a world in the way fiction invents universes. By eluding the circumstances, and promoting an intense plasticity in its modes of enunciation, the lyric poem rather seeks a congruence between what is said and an emotional state, the communication of an impetus crystallizing in the form of the poem. This impetus can be described as a gesture, or as a set of lyrical gestures. Poems try to capture an energy that comes from the outside world as well as from the inner space. A force is conveyed through a form – since modern poetry has given up rules of versification – that is never completely fit. This lyrical energy is shared by the reader through the re-enunciation of the poem. The lyrical »I« has a certain porosity, a manner of subjective transparence that allows the reader’s subjectivity to lodge there and during the time of recitation. It is thus the dynamics between force and form in modern poetry that this article tries to understand.