After 1492, sustained contact between the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia began a vast exchange of crops, animals, diseases, peoples, and ecological practices. Maize, potatoes, horses, sugar, smallpox, and plantation systems changed landscapes across continents. The transformation was biological, economic, and cultural.

The Columbian Exchange altered the imaginative geography of world poetry, from Indigenous laments and Nahua songs to European epic and travel verse. New plants, spices, islands, storms, and colonial landscapes entered poetic language, while environmental violence became inseparable from conquest and memory.