This paper discusses fictional places in poetry. This discussion involves defining poetic fictional places in comparison to fictional localities in narrative fiction, as well as to poems describing places in the actual world. The first key topic is the relation between the fictional place of a poem and a “real” place that can be visited. The question addressed here is the role of places in the actual world in the construction of a poem of “speculative poetry.” The second line of thought concerns the role of the name of a locality in recognizing the said locality as an imaginary place, as well as the significance of fictional, obscure names for emphasizing the phonetic and “phonosemantic” elements of the poem. The third topic is the interaction between the fictional place and the lyrical subject; especially characterizing the situation in which the separation of the lyrical subject from the author and reader, and its likening to the traditional character of fiction, is made easier by the location’s apparent fictionality.
