Caring Space-Time Travel Through Poetry

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Portland State University

2 Lane Community College

Abstract

Poetry ferments space-time travel. Engaging with poetry can disrupt the drumbeat of neoliberal temporal demands by providing a mindful opportunity for intimate connections with people we do not know. Sitting with a poet’s words can represent a pause that takes us out of one time and shifts us to another. A poem may connect the reader with people who have passed from this earth, suggesting that caring moral imagination is not circumscribed to the living. This article explores selections from Janice N. Harrington’s collection, The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home. Harrington’s poems delve into the physical intimacy of care workers and the cared-for, which is otherwise reserved for our society's private sphere of family settings, thereby extending the concept of poetry of witness to a small, intimate, albeit institutionalized setting that, at its core, exists to provide care to others. Specific poems are interrogated for their implications for the reader’s experience of space-time travel, including strengthening the skills of the caring imagination beyond the experience of the words. Poetry allows the reader to travel back to a witnessed event, engaging with shifts in time and space within the parameters of the poem while helping us develop our imaginative skills to continue witnessing experiences and enhance our ability to care in the present and future. The caring imagination required to engage with the poetry of witness is not a static capacity. Instead, through poetry, our imaginative skills can be further cultivated to help us empathetically space-time travel.

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References

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Journal of Philosophical Investigations
Volume 19, Issue 51 - Serial Number 51
Special issue: Care & Time
2025
Pages 163-179

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