The Poetics of Space (1957)

I am my own hiding place. Pg.88.

The primitiveness of refuge. the animal movements of withdrawal. Pg 91

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Very well done and thoroughly intriguing. ( )

I bought this at the James Castle House in Boise, Idaho, inasmuch as Deleuze and hourglasses were both mentioned (and I bought an hourglass, too). A fabulous, sustained reverie for the poet in us all.

This and the other Bachelard translations inspired my best work (poetry) in a series that took me through in excess of 700 poems.

I think his ability to thoughtfully examine space, from a perspective that that is contemplative rather than analytical s a wonderful variant.

Works well for me, at the least. ( )

[W]e are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.

This is not what I expected. The Poetics of Space is not some rigorous discussion of the concept of home or the distinction between inside and outside. This is a meditation. Bachelard prefers "daydream". As one reads, one takes shorthand from the philosopher's imagination. The text is steeped in whimsy and speculation. The citations refer to the poetic, not the philosophical. Heidegger is not mentioned. I suspect that is political.

Borrowing Bachelard's seminal point of contact, his Poetics remains half-open. The idea of the house and dwelling is only explored on the hoof; broader issues of the miniature and the vast are extended the lengthier chew. I loved the sections on nests and wardrobes, each dizzying with references to Rimbaud and insularity. I simply felt the wider thrust of the book abandoned the thesis of the Home.

This then is my ancestral forest. And all the rest is fiction.
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