Plants in Contemporary Poetry - Ecocriticism and the Botanical Imagination

This book studies representations of plants in contemporary American, English, and Australian poetry, addressing the relationship between poetic language and the subjectivity, agency, sentience, consciousness, and intelligence of vegetal life. It forwards an interdisciplinary model of 'botanical criticism' in examining the role of plants in contemporary poetic expression. Drawing from recent plant science and contributing to the new field of critical plant studies, Ryan redresses the lack of botanical emphasis in ecocriticism, ecopoetics, and the environmental humanities. This book will be of interest to the emerging areas of human-plant studies, critical plant studies, and cultural botany.

List of contents

Introduction: Plants’ Lives in Contemporary Poetry 1. Science and Affect in the Plant Poetics of Judith Wright 2. Consciousness and Temporality in Alice Oswald’s Botanical Field 3. Let Plants Be Thy Medicine: Elisabeth Bletsoe’s Pharmacopœia 4. Plant Voices in the Garden: Louise Glück’s The Wild Iris and Other Works 5. An Anti-Pastoralism of Plants? John Kinsella’s Regional Poetics of Flora 6. Cross-Species Empathy: Lorna Dee Cervantes’ Emplumada 7. Plant Poiesis and Spiritual Ecology in the Poetry of Les Murray 8. Transcendence and Rapture in Mary Oliver’s Botanical Poetics Conclusion: Towards a Model of Botanical Criticism

Product details

• Authors: John Ryan
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 24.08.2017
• EAN: 9781138186286
• ISBN: 978-1-138-18628-6
• No. of pages: 246
• Series: Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Biology > Ecology; NATURE / Plants / General, NATURE / Ecology, LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry, LITERARY CRITICISM / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Subjects & Themes / Nature, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 21st Century, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Social impact of environmental issues, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Trees, wildflowers and plants: general interest, Literature: history and criticism, Literary studies: poetry and poets