La ciudad de Nueva York en la poesía moderna norteamericana

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyse the poetic vision offered to us by some of the most representative poets of the twentieth century when faced with the challenge presented by New York, the "global city" par excellence. The inclusion of Walt Whitman in our study is necessary and indispensable, since the Long Island poet has had a fundamental impact both on North American poets and those of the Hispanic world. From as far back as can be remembered, the metropolis has inspired images and themes in creative literature, a literature which in turn has modified to a certain extent our way of experiencing life. The influence of the "poetics of space" motif-to quote Bachelardon Western literature dates back to Virgil's Georgias, a work in which the city is characterised according to its physical and moral attributes. Many Western poets have created ficticious, biographical and moral landscapes inspired by their towns; Michael Drayton's London {Poly-Olbion, 1612/1622); Paris in Baudelaires's Fleurs du mal (1855) and Manhattan in Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1857). Through the centuries, the metropolis has simbolised not only the stability and equlibrium of the physical-spiritual centre, but has also become a metaphor for the human being', especially in the twentieth century.