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Phantom poem

Concept
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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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 composition that exists as absence or implication rather than explicit text

Detailed Definition
A composition that exists through implication, absence, or spectral suggestion rather than as explicit text, challenging conventional notions of what constitutes a poem. Phantom poems can be entirely absent works referenced but never written, deleted compositions leaving only traces, or conceptual pieces existing as ideas rather than texts, raising questions about presence, absence, and the boundaries between the real and imagined in literature.
Example
Example in poetry:
Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Circular Ruins” inspires phantom poems—texts that exist only in reference; Harryette Mullen’s “Sleeping with the Dictionary” includes phantom poems through erasure and allusion; Anne Carson’s “Nox” constructs a phantom poem around her brother’s lost letters; Susan Howe’s “Debths” uses archival fragments to imply phantom poems beneath visible text; Contemporary poet Solmaz Sharif’s “Look” references redacted military documents as phantom poems; Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s “Dictee” weaves ghostly, multilingual phantom poems from historical silence.
Additional Notes
Entire composition existing through absence or implication. Challenges boundaries of what constitutes a poem. Related to conceptual art practices. Experimental form.
Also Known As
Ghost poem Absent text Implied composition Invisible verse Eidolon poem
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