Review of Spatial Engagement with Poetry by Heather H. Yeung

Bowen, Deborah C.

English

Wilfrid Laurier University

The GooseVolume 14No. 2 Tenth Anniversary Issue Article 142-29-2016Spatial Engagement with Poetry by Heather H.YeungDeborah C. BowenRedeemer University CollegePart of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Literaturein English, British Isles Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, Place and EnvironmentCommons, and the Reading and Language CommonsFollow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegooseThis article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrantede la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactezscholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended Citation / Citation recommandéeBowen, Deborah C.. "Spatial Engagement with Poetry by Heather H. Yeung." The Goose, vol. 14 , no. 2 , article 14, 2016,https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol14/iss2/14.Reading (and Sliding Around On) the Maps of Poetry  Spatial Engagement with Poetry by HEATHER H. YEUNG Palgrave MacMillan, 2015 $90.00  Reviewed by DEBORAH BOWEN   This book describes itself as spatial criticism. British sociolinguist Stephen Levinson suggests that, “just as maps stand in abstract spatial relation to real spatial terrain, so spatial relations can give us symbolic ‘maps’ to other domains” (qtd 33).  And the book’s Preface claims that the volumes in this series “seek to make possible different ways of seeing literary and cultural texts” (xii), ways that are theoretically innovative and radically interdisciplinary. But I confess I didn’t get off to a good start with the book. It seemed to state in more obfuscatory terms insights that are likely obvious to most readers of literature: “Poesis is a project of creation which . . . can radically alter the manner in which we see the world subsequently unfold” (1). Here’s hoping so. I was intrigued by the early description of the way in which “the long scrolls of Chinese literature” (3), Yeung’s second poetic heritage, escape a mimetic, narrative or representational framework; and by the notion of a poetic work as “an affective sort of map of a particular landscape in a particular time” (3); and by the parallels between Asian traditional poetics and Western postmodern poetics in terms of a “nonlinear shifting resonance of poetic sense” (3). However, the fairly frequent grammatical and stylistic errors in this part of the text undermined my confidence in the authorial voice. Thus I had trouble with the big claims when they came: “Mapping, in fact, is poesis, and poetry is the form of literature that is closest to the development of the self as it plays host to referential and bodily language without being reducible to either” (15). I struggled particularly with Yeung’s section on the body: “The human body . . . is inherently spatial” (44) is hardly worth saying, and yet Yeung wants to say this and much more about the relationship of poetic space to bodily space. Too often, promising ideas are cut short by the plethora of other foci that Yeung wants to consider. Yeung’s argument that poems can be approached through the trope of space is potentially productive: the poem as space (a visual, silent appreciation of the written poem in its space on the page); the poem of or in space (the poetic image projecting a worldview or theme by deixis—though Yeung is unclear about quite what she means by suggesting that these two prepositions are in some way equivalent); and the poem as “vocalic utterance,” which “gives way to an enunciating I [speaker’s point of view] . . . and an enunciating eye [vocalized landscape]” (9). Yeung will make much of this “vocalic space,” because she understands it to lie between representation and reality, voice embodying “the process of poetic ‘becoming’” (9), and therefore, being significant for her “theory of affective mapping” (8) or “multilayered affective engagement” (70). Her central thesis turns out to be that “the spatial nature of the poem is found as much in its privileging of aspects of voice as it is in the textual and mimetic spaces it manipulates and portrays” (47–48). She believes the three modes of mapping space must be taken together in order to avoid reductive reading: allowing dominance to the visual text or reading through the “I” of the 1Bowen: Spatial Engagement with PoetryPublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016poem’s speaker creates a “dislocating poetics” (14) which doesn’t accommodate “the other life of poetry, as vocalized and vocal performance” (62). Speaking against what she calls the “detrimental forces of linear narrative, biographical interpretation, or over-dramatization” (11), Yeung privileges “the affective mechanisms at play in the process of voicing, reading, and engaging with the poem” (70); though it’s not always clear how such mechanisms engage with a poetics of space, they are clearly important and worth taking time to explore. The second half of the book is much stronger. I would even encourage readers to start here, as Yeung reads the work of four contemporary British poets—Thomas Kinsella, Kathleen Jamie, Mimi Khalvati, and Alice Oswald—attempting to allow the “I/eyes of the poems [to] generate potential ways of reading” (9) and to “trace an affective map of the poetic terrain” (10). She describes Kinsella’s concern with a “dialectic of order and waste” (85) and with an “ontotropological” word-mapping, though it’s unclear how these fine readings of his poetry relate to a sense of specifically spatial engagement. For Kathleen Jamie, “the body is a part of, and the means by which we can feel and express, the landscape” (128). The poetry is here counterpointed with 19th-century anatomical slides as Jamie maps what Yeung calls “the process of becoming” (121), especially in terms of the brain’s physical and affective relation to the heart. Khalvati’s is a “poetry of intimate perception” (150), concerned with the way in which the play of light constructs the perceived world, and often set in the borderland light of dawn or dusk; Yeung sees here a desire, echoing Virginia Woolf, to “spatialize” time and memory (134). And Oswald’s long poem "Dart" gives a “sound-map” (151) of the development of a river from source to sea, in poetry that explores multiple voices and hybrid states of being and “charts . . . the acts of inscription and enunciation, being and consciousness,” using the “fluid model” (170) of the river to emphasize “the sense of becoming, of constant and continuous movement” (173).  But it’s ironic that a book which is so deeply concerned for the reader’s engagement with poetry—even to the extent of arguing that “voice is a part of the poem’s reader” (60)—is at times so difficult to read. In part this is because Yeung’s definitions of terms are slippery and seem to shift even from one page to another.  “Space” is legitimately slippery in this way:  space as geographical area, space as gap, space as aperture, blank space, temporal space—but Yeung’s own heuristic categories should surely be less open to constant revision. The problem is also that the first section of the book starts many hares, but few of them are satisfactorily chased to ground. Passing references to Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva and other heavyweights too often seem gratuitous; the invocations of psychoanalysis, feminist theory, “neuroaesthetic research,” ethics, and economics are spotty and irregular, so that the reading experience is of setting off on one path of a map only to find it being erased or crisscrossed by many others. However, Yeung certainly got my mind racing in all directions, and her readings of specific poets are rewarding and original. Thus, though this is a book that is trying to do both too little and too much, it’s worth exploring as an early foray into a poetically new field.  Geospatial metaphor intended.                                   2The Goose, Vol. 14, No. 2 [2016], Art. 14https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol14/iss2/14DEBORAH BOWEN is British by birth but has lived in different places and spaces in Ontario for more than half her life. She teaches English at Redeemer University College in Ancaster. She has published Stories of the Middle Space: Reading the Ethics of Postmodern Realisms (McGill-Queen's U P, 2010) and edited The Strategic Smorgasbord of Postmodernity: Literature and the Christian Critic (Cambridge Scholars P, 2007). Recently she has become intrigued by the spiritual issues implicit in cultural geography, and particularly their instantiation in poetry.    3Bowen: Spatial Engagement with PoetryPublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016

Spatial Engagement with Poetry by Heather H. Yeung

Scholars Commons

The Goose
Volume 14
No. 2 Tenth Anniversary Issue Article 14
2-29-2016
Spatial Engagement with Poetry by Heather H.
Yeung
Deborah C. Bowen
Redeemer University College
Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Literature
in English, British Isles Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, Place and Environment
Commons, and the Reading and Language Commons
Follow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose
This article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by an
authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrante
de la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactez
scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Recommended Citation / Citation recommandée
Bowen, Deborah C.. "Spatial Engagement with Poetry by Heather H. Yeung." The Goose, vol. 14 , no. 2 , article 14, 2016,
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol14/iss2/14.
Reading (and Sliding Around On) the Maps 
of Poetry 
 
Spatial Engagement with Poetry by 
HEATHER H. YEUNG 
Palgrave MacMillan, 2015 $90.00 
 
Reviewed by DEBORAH BOWEN 
 
 This book describes itself as spatial 
criticism. British sociolinguist Stephen 
Levinson suggests that, “just as maps stand 
in abstract spatial relation to real spatial 
terrain, so spatial relations can give us 
symbolic ‘maps’ to other domains” (qtd 33).  
And the book’s Preface claims that the 
volumes in this series “seek to make 
possible different ways of seeing literary 
and cultural texts” (xii), ways that are 
theoretically innovative and radically 
interdisciplinary. 
But I confess I didn’t get off to a 
good start with the book. It seemed to state 
in more obfuscatory terms insights that are 
likely obvious to most readers of literature: 
“Poesis is a project of creation which . . . 
can radically alter the manner in which we 
see the world subsequently unfold” (1). 
Here’s hoping so. I was intrigued by the 
early description of the way in which “the 
long scrolls of Chinese literature” (3), 
Yeung’s second poetic heritage, escape a 
mimetic, narrative or representational 
framework; and by the notion of a poetic 
work as “an affective sort of map of a 
particular landscape in a particular time” 
(3); and by the parallels between Asian 
traditional poetics and Western 
postmodern poetics in terms of a 
“nonlinear shifting resonance of poetic 
sense” (3). However, the fairly frequent 
grammatical and stylistic errors in this part 
of the text undermined my confidence in 
the authorial voice. Thus I had trouble with 
the big claims when they came: “Mapping, 
in fact, is poesis, and poetry is the form of 
literature that is closest to the development 
of the self as it plays host to referential and 
bodily language without being reducible to 
either” (15). I struggled particularly with 
Yeung’s section on the body: “The human 
body . . . is inherently spatial” (44) is hardly 
worth saying, and yet Yeung wants to say 
this and much more about the relationship 
of poetic space to bodily space. Too often, 
promising ideas are cut short by the 
plethora of other foci that Yeung wants to 
consider. 
Yeung’s argument that poems can 
be approached through the trope of space 
is potentially productive: the poem as space 
(a visual, silent appreciation of the written 
poem in its space on the page); the poem of 
or in space (the poetic image projecting a 
worldview or theme by deixis—though 
Yeung is unclear about quite what she 
means by suggesting that these two 
prepositions are in some way equivalent); 
and the poem as “vocalic utterance,” which 
“gives way to an enunciating I [speaker’s 
point of view] . . . and an enunciating eye 
[vocalized landscape]” (9). Yeung will make 
much of this “vocalic space,” because she 
understands it to lie between 
representation and reality, voice embodying 
“the process of poetic ‘becoming’” (9), and 
therefore, being significant for her “theory 
of affective mapping” (8) or “multilayered 
affective engagement” (70). Her central 
thesis turns out to be that “the spatial 
nature of the poem is found as much in its 
privileging of aspects of voice as it is in the 
textual and mimetic spaces it manipulates 
and portrays” (47–48). She believes the 
three modes of mapping space must be 
taken together in order to avoid reductive 
reading: allowing dominance to the visual 
text or reading through the “I” of the 
1
Bowen: Spatial Engagement with Poetry
Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016
poem’s speaker creates a “dislocating 
poetics” (14) which doesn’t accommodate 
“the other life of poetry, as vocalized and 
vocal performance” (62). Speaking against 
what she calls the “detrimental forces of 
linear narrative, biographical interpretation, 
or over-dramatization” (11), Yeung 
privileges “the affective mechanisms at play 
in the process of voicing, reading, and 
engaging with the poem” (70); though it’s 
not always clear how such mechanisms 
engage with a poetics of space, they are 
clearly important and worth taking time to 
explore. 
The second half of the book is much 
stronger. I would even encourage readers 
to start here, as Yeung reads the work of 
four contemporary British poets—Thomas 
Kinsella, Kathleen Jamie, Mimi Khalvati, and 
Alice Oswald—attempting to allow the 
“I/eyes of the poems [to] generate potential 
ways of reading” (9) and to “trace an 
affective map of the poetic terrain” (10). 
She describes Kinsella’s concern with a 
“dialectic of order and waste” (85) and with 
an “ontotropological” word-mapping, 
though it’s unclear how these fine readings 
of his poetry relate to a sense of specifically 
spatial engagement. For Kathleen Jamie, 
“the body is a part of, and the means by 
which we can feel and express, the 
landscape” (128). The poetry is here 
counterpointed with 19th-century 
anatomical slides as Jamie maps what 
Yeung calls “the process of becoming” 
(121), especially in terms of the brain’s 
physical and affective relation to the heart. 
Khalvati’s is a “poetry of intimate 
perception” (150), concerned with the way 
in which the play of light constructs the 
perceived world, and often set in the 
borderland light of dawn or dusk; Yeung 
sees here a desire, echoing Virginia Woolf, 
to “spatialize” time and memory (134). And 
Oswald’s long poem "Dart" gives a “sound-
map” (151) of the development of a river 
from source to sea, in poetry that explores 
multiple voices and hybrid states of being 
and “charts . . . the acts of inscription and 
enunciation, being and consciousness,” 
using the “fluid model” (170) of the river to 
emphasize “the sense of becoming, of 
constant and continuous movement” (173).  
But it’s ironic that a book which is so 
deeply concerned for the reader’s 
engagement with poetry—even to the 
extent of arguing that “voice is a part of the 
poem’s reader” (60)—is at times so difficult 
to read. In part this is because Yeung’s 
definitions of terms are slippery and seem 
to shift even from one page to another.  
“Space” is legitimately slippery in this way:  
space as geographical area, space as gap, 
space as aperture, blank space, temporal 
space—but Yeung’s own heuristic 
categories should surely be less open to 
constant revision. The problem is also that 
the first section of the book starts many 
hares, but few of them are satisfactorily 
chased to ground. Passing references to 
Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva and 
other heavyweights too often seem 
gratuitous; the invocations of 
psychoanalysis, feminist theory, 
“neuroaesthetic research,” ethics, and 
economics are spotty and irregular, so that 
the reading experience is of setting off on 
one path of a map only to find it being 
erased or crisscrossed by many others. 
However, Yeung certainly got my mind 
racing in all directions, and her readings of 
specific poets are rewarding and original. 
Thus, though this is a book that is trying to 
do both too little and too much, it’s worth 
exploring as an early foray into a poetically 
new field.  Geospatial metaphor intended. 
      
                            
2
The Goose, Vol. 14, No. 2 [2016], Art. 14
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol14/iss2/14
DEBORAH BOWEN is British by birth but has 
lived in different places and spaces in Ontario 
for more than half her life. She teaches English 
at Redeemer University College in Ancaster. She 
has published Stories of the Middle Space: 
Reading the Ethics of Postmodern Realisms 
(McGill-Queen's U P, 2010) and edited The 
Strategic Smorgasbord of Postmodernity: 
Literature and the Christian Critic (Cambridge 
Scholars P, 2007). Recently she has become 
intrigued by the spiritual issues implicit in 
cultural geography, and particularly their 
instantiation in poetry. 
 
 
 
3
Bowen: Spatial Engagement with Poetry
Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016


https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1182&amp;context=thegoose

Spatial Engagement with Poetry by Heather H. Yeung

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