Poems in the World: The Ecopoetics of Anne Waldman’s <i>Life Notes</i>
This essay argues that Anne Waldman’s 1973 selected poems, <i>Life Notes</i>, articulates a vision of the environment that is positively and reparatively enmeshed with language and culture. Embracing the paradox at the heart of the best environmental writing, <i>Life Notes</i>...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2021-03-01
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| Series: | Humanities |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/10/1/50 |
| _version_ | 1797541684870905856 |
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| author | Rona Cran |
| author_facet | Rona Cran |
| author_sort | Rona Cran |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | This essay argues that Anne Waldman’s 1973 selected poems, <i>Life Notes</i>, articulates a vision of the environment that is positively and reparatively enmeshed with language and culture. Embracing the paradox at the heart of the best environmental writing, <i>Life Notes</i> reveals our natural environments to be at once legible and unknowable, and embodies this through experimental forms, language, and typography. This collection of poems, which has yet to be paid significant critical attention (despite Waldman’s renowned status as a poet), artfully mediates the relationship between word and world, giving voice, shape, and form to what we might call the poet’s ‘ecology of knowing’, per Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s formulation. Through a sustained process of imaginative elision of the human and nonhuman, I argue, Waldman illuminates the ways in which the ‘natural’ world is almost always touched by the human, and refutes the widely-held cultural fantasy that nature is self-evidently restorative or redemptive and thereby somehow at a remove from humankind. <i>Life Notes</i>, I suggest, is a ‘dissipative structure’, critically entangled with the everyday environment out of which it emerges and with which it remains ‘involved in a continual exchange of energy’ (Waldman). |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-10T13:19:23Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-82834bac41474bc59ffdcde61400e51b |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2076-0787 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-10T13:19:23Z |
| publishDate | 2021-03-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Humanities |
| spelling | doaj.art-82834bac41474bc59ffdcde61400e51b2023-11-21T10:10:07ZengMDPI AGHumanities2076-07872021-03-011015010.3390/h10010050Poems in the World: The Ecopoetics of Anne Waldman’s <i>Life Notes</i>Rona Cran0Department of English, College of Arts and Law, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UKThis essay argues that Anne Waldman’s 1973 selected poems, <i>Life Notes</i>, articulates a vision of the environment that is positively and reparatively enmeshed with language and culture. Embracing the paradox at the heart of the best environmental writing, <i>Life Notes</i> reveals our natural environments to be at once legible and unknowable, and embodies this through experimental forms, language, and typography. This collection of poems, which has yet to be paid significant critical attention (despite Waldman’s renowned status as a poet), artfully mediates the relationship between word and world, giving voice, shape, and form to what we might call the poet’s ‘ecology of knowing’, per Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s formulation. Through a sustained process of imaginative elision of the human and nonhuman, I argue, Waldman illuminates the ways in which the ‘natural’ world is almost always touched by the human, and refutes the widely-held cultural fantasy that nature is self-evidently restorative or redemptive and thereby somehow at a remove from humankind. <i>Life Notes</i>, I suggest, is a ‘dissipative structure’, critically entangled with the everyday environment out of which it emerges and with which it remains ‘involved in a continual exchange of energy’ (Waldman).https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/10/1/50Anne Waldmanecopoetryecocriticismgreen readingBeat womenNew York School |
| spellingShingle | Rona Cran Poems in the World: The Ecopoetics of Anne Waldman’s <i>Life Notes</i> Humanities Anne Waldman ecopoetry ecocriticism green reading Beat women New York School |
| title | Poems in the World: The Ecopoetics of Anne Waldman’s <i>Life Notes</i> |
| title_full | Poems in the World: The Ecopoetics of Anne Waldman’s <i>Life Notes</i> |
| title_fullStr | Poems in the World: The Ecopoetics of Anne Waldman’s <i>Life Notes</i> |
| title_full_unstemmed | Poems in the World: The Ecopoetics of Anne Waldman’s <i>Life Notes</i> |
| title_short | Poems in the World: The Ecopoetics of Anne Waldman’s <i>Life Notes</i> |
| title_sort | poems in the world the ecopoetics of anne waldman s i life notes i |
| topic | Anne Waldman ecopoetry ecocriticism green reading Beat women New York School |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/10/1/50 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT ronacran poemsintheworldtheecopoeticsofannewaldmansilifenotesi |