Mexico City in 21th Century Mexican Poetry. Poetic Figurations of Urban Space

Abstract

This paper focuses on the study of some of the forms of representing Mexico City that are reflected in 21^th Century Mexican Poetry. Taking as the starting point the heterogeneous and hybrid nature attributed to this City, and limiting the study to four of its characteristic features —namely extension, overcrowding, difficulties in movements and transportation, and the mixed feelings of its population—, it explores some of this urban space’s metaphorical figurations that can be found in texts. In line with the above mentioned hybridism, the City appears in many of them as an animate being with diverse characteristics —woman-animal-insect-machine-effigy— that symbolizes the City's monstrosity and explains the senses of threat and danger at the possibility (equally feared and desired) of its annihilation and destruction.