“Full / of Endless Distances”:Forms of Desire in Poetic Attention
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This essay explores desire as one mode of poetic attention. Through readings of poems by Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Robert Hass, and Wallace Stevens, Ishow how desire is given form through the formal orchestration of attention. In thesepoems, desire emerges as a mode of attention brought into tension by inflections ofinterest and lack. This reading gives us a new way of thinking about the poetics ofdesire and a new language for exploring how desire is not only described but also produced and embodied in poetic form.
DOI: 10.82940/zxe8-cr35
Author: Alford, Lucy
Institution: Stanford University
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W3030502909