Home › Glossary › Letter F

Fetichism

Constraint
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A poem that obsessively focuses on a single object, elevating it to symbolic or erotic status.

Detailed Definition
Fetichism (fetishism) constrains the poem to sustained attention on one item—shoe, weapon, relic—imbuing it with excessive meaning; this technique explores desire, commodification, or animism, using object fixation as formal boundary to unpack psychological or cultural investment, and transforms the mundane into talisman through lyrical hyper-focus and symbolic inflation.
Example
Example in poetry:
Fetichism in poetry: object-focused odes (Neruda’s “Ode to a Large Tuna”); commodity fetishism in capitalist critique poems; constraint poets animate inanimate objects via personification; fetishized body parts in love poetry; digital fetishism in poems about smartphones; surrealist fetish objects (mannequins, clocks) in verse.
Additional Notes
Fetichism focuses obsessively on objects—commodities, body parts, tech. Neruda’s odes exemplify this. As constraint, poets animate objects via personification. It critiques consumerism or explores desire, linking to thing theory.
Also Known As
Fetishism
Skip to main content