Our in-class discussion today on white space was super helpful to me in terms of interpreting white space, but I feel like I still have a long way to go in the way of actually utilizing it myself in a way that feels genuine. I’m very interested in it, and I love the way it can function in a piece. A few months ago, I stumbled on this poem by Eugenia Leigh, and it stuck with me:
GENESIS
How carelessly God hummed us whole
with such pronounced
holes for lungs.How hollow we are. How
anonymous—six billion
pitchers—flicked—discarded
in a faraway warehouse.
I guess at this point I’m very interested in how white space can be used to denote physical space or a physical feeling, like it does in this one. I absolutely love how the space functions in this poem in such a way that I have a physical reaction: I feel myself breathing, but I am also aware of the effort it takes for me to draw breath, somehow. I feel the holes in my chest. One of my favorite things about poetry is its ability to elicit that physicality in the reader, and that’s something I really want to look into playing with.
That being said, white space is such a wonderfully flexible element, and I’m interested in how other people like to see it used/how others use it. I know we did a brainstorm in class, but I’m wondering how everybody else views white space and how you go about incorporating it? I know what I like when I see it, but I feel like I struggle in incorporating it successfully myself.