Citationality and narrativity in the poem “Extremo ocidente”, by Marcos Siscar

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the poem “Extremo ocidente”, by Marcos Siscar, through its relationship of citationality with the film Paterson (2016), directed by Jim Jarmusch, and with the book Paterson (1963), a long poem by William Carlos Williams, seeking to understand the elements involved in this compositional procedure and its role in constituting the poem's narrativity. To this end, it carries out a comparative reading of the poem, the book, and the film, grounded in theoretical texts by Marcos Siscar himself and by authors such as Marjorie Perloff and Rosa Maria Martelo, among others. It concludes that the plays of meaning afforded by the citational procedure destabilize the dimensions of subject, time, and space in the poem, as well as the notions of permanence and finitude, resulting in an unfolding narration built from the different works it draws upon.