In visual art, negative space is the area around a piece of art, which is important because that space helps the viewer understand where to focus their attention. Positive space is the object of that attention (the art piece). Brooks uses negative and positive space as a motif to reinforce the theme of Redefining Art.

The title of the poem and first several lines encourage the reader to believe that the broken window is the positive space—that is, that the observer should be paying attention to the shards of glass still hanging in the window. By focusing on the broken glass shards as art, the observer in the poem is able to ignore the socio-economic context that produces the glass and (more important) the boy. The boy disappears into the negative space around the broken window, in other words.

When the boy’s voice appears in the poem, he insists that what the observer should be paying attention to is “the hole” (Line 7). The hole isn’t negative space that draws the observer’s/reader’s eye to the broken glass. It is instead who the boy believes himself to be, making the hole the positive space.