Home › Glossary › Letter T

time-spanning poetry

Genre
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

Verse that traverses or juxtaposes multiple historical eras to explore continuity, change, or memory.

Detailed Definition
Time-spanning poetry explores experiences, themes, or relationships across historical periods rather than remaining fixed in single moments. This approach foregrounds duration, change, and historical consciousness as central to meaning.
Example
Example in poetry:
Whitman’s “Song of Myself” is time-spanning poetry, moving from birth to cosmic eternity; In “The Waste Land,” Eliot weaves ancient myth, medieval legend, and 1920s London into time-spanning poetry; Dante’s “Divine Comedy” spans earthly life, purgatory, and paradise; In “Middle Passage,” Robert Hayden merges 18th-century slave trade with 20th-century memory; Contemporary poet Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen” spans personal microaggressions and centuries of racial history.
Additional Notes
Verse concerned with time's passage, historical change, or relationships between different temporal moments.
Also Known As
Time-based poetry Historical verse Temporal composition Diachronic literature Diachronic verse
Skip to main content