Redstart: An Ecological Poetics

by Forrest Gander, John Kinsella

The damage humans have perpetrated on our environment has certainly affected a poet’s means and material. But can poetry be ecological? Can it display or be invested with values that acknowledge the economy of interrelationship between the human and the nonhuman realms? Aside from issues of theme and reference, how might syntax, line break, or the shape of the poem on the page express an ecological ethics?

 

To answer these questions, poets Forrest Gander and John Kinsella offer an experiment, a collaborative volume of prose and poetry that investigates—both thematically and formally—the relationship between nature and culture, language and perception. They ask whether, in an age of globalization, industrialization, and rapid human population growth, an ethnocentric view of human beings as a species independent from others underpins our exploitation of natural resources. Does the disease of Western subjectivity constitute an element of the aesthetics that undermine poetic resistance to the killing of the land? Why does “the land” have to give something back to the writer?

 
This innovative volume speaks to all people wanting to understand how artistic and critical endeavors can enrich, rather than impoverish, the imperiled world around us.  

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

84 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

Born in the Mojave Desert, Forrest Gander grew up in Virginia and spent significant periods in San Francisco, Dolores Hidalgo (Mexico), and Eureka Springs, Arkansas before moving to Rhode Island. He holds degrees in literature and in geology, a subject that recurs in his writing and for which his work has been connected to ecological poetics.

Collaboration has been an important engagement for Gander who, over the years, has worked with artists such as Ann Hamilton, Sally Mann, Eiko & Koma, Lucas Foglia, Ashwini Bhat, Richard Hirsch & Michael Rogers. He also translates extensively and has edited several anthologies of contemporary poetry from Latin America, Spain, and Japan.

He writes across the genres. A recent project with the Chilean poet Raul Zurita is Pinholes in the Night Essential Poems from Latin America. Other titles by Gander include The Trace, a novel set on the border with Mexico; Fungus Skull Eye Wing Selected Poems of Alfonso D'Aquino, translations; and Redstart an Ecological Poetics, essays and poems written with John Kinsella. Gander's 2011 book of poems, Core Samples from the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Reviews

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

excerpt from Prefatory Note
'Why does “the land” have to give something back to the writer?’ (vii)
‘I believe the “I” should always be under pressure: under pressure in what constitutes the self and under pressure in how it operates as messenger and witness.’ (vii)

excerpt from The Future of the Past (Forrest Gander)
‘If our perceptual experience is mostly palimpsestic or endlessly juxtaposed and fragmented, if events rely have discreet beginnings or endings but only layers, duration, and transitions; if natural processes are already altered by and responsive to human observation, how does poetry register the complex interdependency that draws us into a dialogue with the world?’ (1)
‘Many of the descriptions of the relation between poetry and ecology are metaphorical, and the metaphors have been thoroughly mixed. A poem expressing a concern for ecology might be structured as compost, it might be developed rhizomatically, it might be described as a nest, a collectivity. Its structure might be cyclical, indeterminate, or strictly patterned. The formal possibilities are as infinite as ever since there isn’t any formal structure for representing ecology or nature. And writing is a constructed system.’ (13)

excerpt from A Note on Ecopoetics (John Kinsella)
‘Place is about event as much as location.’ (38)

excerpt from The Movement of Yellow-Rumped Thornbills: Twittering Machines (John Kinsella)
‘Even using prosodic “devices,” I instill enough “errors” to default to “open form.”’ (73)
‘For me, this is why any poem will have to remain open ended, resisting not only closure but also “opening.” The narrative is too dependent on coordinates’ (77)

[Paula Koneazny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the idea of writing from a place or about a place as opposed to a landscape (which always seems to reference the I as subject-focal point, the landscape as object or field for the I's emotions, aesthetics, etc). Ecopoetics seems to acknowledge place & the species that inhabit that place as subjects entire onto themselves. "Nature" is the word coined to refer to all that isn't human, setting the human species apart. It's currently popular to insist that humans are part of nature, although that is by definition not possible. I think Gander & Kinsella come closer to describing a working relationship between our species & the rest of what constitutes the world we inhabit. Their argument is complex, however, & I haven't as yet completely absorbed it. I enjoyed the back and forth of the poetry, two poets writing from very different locations (Kinsella-Australia; Gander-various American locations). I perhaps appreciated the essays even more.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

The long sequence "Redstart" ranges across poetic registers and is sometimes provocative, as is Kinsella's essay "The Movements of Yellow-Ranged Thornbills: Twittering Machines." But the writers too often feel compelled to rehearse truisms of language-oriented poetics and postmodern theories of subjectivity, all repackaged as ecocriticism.

[steffi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, especially the essays. I liked the "idea" of the poetry more than I liked the poems themselves, though I enjoyed reading them. If you want to read further about ecological poetics, read the poetry/essays of Tim Lilburn and Don Mckay.