This dissertation reads the Spanish poetry of the first two decades of the seventeenth century to tease out the period’s pervasive style. I argue that the word despojos encapsulates this style, with its three meanings: (1) the spoils of war, (2) the remains of the past, and (3) recyclable materials from a demolished building. Despojos, by implying actions of deprivation, contemplation, and renovation, integrates the aesthetic theory, temporal sense, and moral worldview of the period. I select three long poems as my cases; despojos invites inquiry into the epistemological concerns these poems address and embody.Chapter One examines Villamediana’s Fábula de Faetón (1617) and explores the interplay of warfare and art in early modern Spain. Villamediana’s adaptation of the Phaethon myth is interpreted as a poetic spectacle staging both order and disorder. Analyzing the poem’s representation of chaos (an allegory of war) through the aesthetic doctrine of matter and form, I argue that shared violence underpins both military and poetic arts in the early seventeenth century. Chapter Two examines Góngora’s Soledades (1613–17) and delves into the sense of time and history motivating the poem’s style. I consider Góngora’s work as grounded in the temporality of remains. I compare this poem to the still-life paintings popular during the same period, interpreting the depiction of liminal moments in both art forms through the interplay of temporal sensibility and historical thinking. By enacting threshold time, Soledades resists the imperial regimes of history. Chapter Three analyzes Balbuena’s Grandeza mexicana (1604), exploring how geographic and moral-economic imaginations shape the circulation and accumulation of textual dynamics. This poem deploys lists to catalog the wealth of colonial Mexico City. By reading it along with early print maps of the city, I show Mexico City was taken as an imaginary site for global geography. By redefining “interés,” the poem repurposes its moral value, making it central to urban culture and humanity. Together, these chapters illuminate the keyword despojos from three perspectives, integrating into a complex style that reveals the thinking and feeling habits of the early seventeenth-century Hispanic world.