Poetry, document, authorship

Abstract This essay seeks to understand procedures found in various contemporary poetry books that, through the use of documents, simultaneously question the role of authorship and produce a sense of estrangement in the perception of the real. In the examples examined here, the book of poems is presented as a minimal unit of poetry. This understanding launches a series questions concerning the underpinning of the genre - the printed media - as a fundamental element in the reception of these works.