Sustainable Poetry: Four American Ecopoets

by Leonard M. Scigaj

Overview

Focusing on the work of A.R. Ammons, Wendell Berry, W.S. Merwin, and Gary Snyder, author Leonard Scigaj shows that just as a sustainable society does not depreciate its resource base, so a sustainable poetry does not restrict interest to language. Over the past thirty years many poets have shown an increasing sensitivity to ecological thinking. But critics trained in poststructuralist language theory often fail to explore the substance of ecopoetry. Scigaj is the first to define ecopoetry as separate and distinct from nature or environmental poetry, marked by its concern with balancing the interests of human beings with the needs of nature. Just as science learned that the earth was not the center of the universe, ecopoetry insists on the recognition that humans are not at the center of the natural world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813160047
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	12/15/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

Editorial Reviews

Aldo Leopold's land ethic introduced the concept that healthy communities depend on all living things to coexist in harmony. Scigaj (English, Virginia Polytechnic Inst.) suggests that ecopoems "help us to live our lives by encouraging us to understand, respect, and cooperate with the laws of nature that sustain us." He further differentiates environmental poetry from ecopoetry by identifying the former's reverence of nature and focus on environmental issues while lacking a concentration on nature "as an interrelated series of cyclic feedback systems." Although he concentrates on four American ecopoets--A.R. Ammons, Wendell Berry, W.S. Merwin, and Gary Snyder--Scigaj uses about a third of the book to establish his argument that phenomenology rather than poststructural language theory should be used to define environmental poetry. According to Scigaj, phenomenology recognizes the referential context of literature while poststructural language theory remains hermetically sealed from the quotidian world. The density of the text makes this appropriate for academic collections.--Sue Samson, Univ. of Montana Lib., Missoula Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Will join John Elder's Imagining the Earth as the most important contribution to date to the study of contemporary ecopoetry.

Lawrence Buell

A rich context for our understading the work and persons of A.R. Ammons, Wendell Berry, W.S. Merwin, and Gary Snyder, four outstanding American poets.

Psychological Reports

Anyone who things that nature poetry is a leftover mode from a bygone era, or that all nature poets are alike, needs to read this book before we have no nature left.

Virginia Quarterly Review

Scigaj uses his examination of contemporary ecological poetry to mount a direct assault on the way literary theory has been conducted over the past twenty years.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

The first book to treat the US's four foremost ecopoets as ecopoets.

Choice

Urges readers to distinguish between two kinds of poetry in order to set the stage for an epic intellectual and aesthetic battle.

Western American Literature

"The first book to treat the US's four foremost ecopoets as ecopoets." — Choice

"Scigaj uses his examination of contemporary ecological poetry to mount a direct assault on the way literary theory has been conducted over the past twenty years." — Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

"Will join John Elder's Imagining the Earth as the most important contribution to date to the study of contemporary ecopoetry." — Lawrence Buell

"A rich context for our understading the work and persons of A.R. Ammons, Wendell Berry, W.S. Merwin, and Gary Snyder, four outstanding American poets." — Psychological Reports

"Anyone who things that nature poetry is a leftover mode from a bygone era, or that all nature poets are alike, needs to read this book before we have no nature left." — Virginia Quarterly Review

"Urges readers to distinguish between two kinds of poetry in order to set the stage for an epic intellectual and aesthetic battle." — Western American Literature

From the Publisher