Sprachkunst Jahrgang XLI/2010/2. Halbband, pp. 283-298, 2012/07/18
Beiträge zur Literaturwissenschaft
The theme of the writer’s struggle with the blank page frequently occurs in modern English and American poetry. Four metaphorical meanings of the empty page can be distinguished: (1) an unstructured space (wilderness, desert, winter landscape); (2) the space to be written in (an island in a sea of words); (3) the other side of the text or the stories beneath the poem which include the (subconscious) obstacles to writing; (4) a page that appears to be empty, but actually has been written on by other texts, various discourses, and cultural ideas. The relevance of these metaphors is illustrated with a number of texts that concentrate on the choice of subject matter, poetic form, the role of the imagination and the creative process.
