UTAD Ecocrítica Lit.

Expressão Inglesa Aula sobre ecopoesia 13 Novembro, 2018

Nuno Marques Umeå University - nuno.marques@umu.se

Esta aula vai oferecer uma introdução a alguns conceitos chaves da ecopoesia Norte-Americana. Iremos ler e
analisar dois poemas para elucidar a abrangência formal deste modo poético, desde a lírica à poesia
experimental. Veremos como, após um primeiro momento centrado na poesia lírica, a ecopoesia se define
cada vez mais pela experimentação formal. Discutiremos a ecopoética - o fazer e o pensar sobre ecopoesia -
enquanto prática artística e crítica enraizada num contexto material e ambiental que questiona distinções
binárias ser humano/natureza; e distinções de género e espécie. A aula vai começar com uma discussão a
partir de um questionário breve que as/os aluna/os responderam em casa sobre dois poemas como
apresentação dos conceitos chave:
- crise ambiental
- natureza / cultura
- antropocêntrico / etnocêntrico
- ecopoesia
- importância da forma
- temas chave / imagens chave
- contextualização dos dois poemas na história da literatura Norte-Americana.

Antes da aula - responder a este questionário:

• Estes poemas representam a natureza?

• Como? Porque sim/não?
• Indique a relação entre a forma e o tema dos poemas.
• A forma está relacionada com a natureza?
• Indique, por favor, as principais diferenças entre os dois poemas.
• Pode dar outros exemplos da natureza na poesia?

Depois da aula - escrever um ecopoema.

Bibliografia:
Os poemas que vamos analisar são entregues num documento PDF. Este documento também tem algumas
propostas de leitura e desafios de mudança de percepção feitas por ecopoetas, para apoio ao exercício de
escrita de um ecopoema.

Outras referências (não necessárias para a aula) para aprofundar o tópico são:

Adamson, J., Gleason, W.A. & Pellow, D.N., (2016). Keywords for Environmental Studies. New York: New York University Press.
Ashton, J, (2005)  From Modernism to Postmodernism: American Poetry and Theory in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Bryson, J. S. (ed.) (2002), Ecopoetry: a critical introduction, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Corey, J. & Waldrep, G.C. (ed.) (2012). The Arcadia Project: North American postmodern pastoral. Boise, Idaho: Ahsahta Press
Dungy, C.T. (ed.) (2009). Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Fisher-Wirth, A. W. & Street, Laura-Gray (ed.) (2013), The Ecopoetry Anthology, Trinity University Press, San Antonio, Texas.
Frank, R. J., & Sayre, H. M. (1988) The Line in Postmodern Poetry. U Of Illinois P.
Hume, Angela & Osborne, Gillian (red.) (2018). Ecopoetics: Essays in the Field. Iowa: University of Iowa Press.
Iijima, B. (ed.) (2010) )((eco(lang)(uage(reader)), Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Scigaj, L. M. (1999) Sustainable Poetry: Four American Ecopoets. Lexington: U of Kentucky.
Staples, H. L. & King, A. (ed.) (2017), Big Energy Poets: Ecopoetry Thinks Climate Change, BlazeVOX [books], Buffalo, New York.
UTAD Ecocrítica Lit. Expressão Inglesa Aula sobre ecopoesia 13 Novembro, 2018

Mary Oliver “Alligator Poem” (The Ecopoetry Anthology, p.417-18)

I knelt down
at the edge of the water,
and if the white birds standing
in the tops of the trees whistled any warning
I didn’t understand,
I drank up to the very moment it came
crashing toward me,
its tail flailing
like a bundle of swords,
slashing the grass,
and the inside of its cradle-shaped mouth
gaping,
and rimmed with teeth—
and that’s how I almost died
of foolishness
in beautiful Florida.
But I didn’t.
I leaped aside, and fell,
and it streamed past me, crushing everything in its path
as it swept down to the water
and threw itself in,
and, in the end,
this isn’t a poem about foolishness
but about how I rose from the ground
and saw the world as if for the second time,
the way it really is.
The water, that circle of shattered glass,
healed itself with a slow whisper
and lay back
with the back-lit light of polished steel,
and the birds, in the endless waterfalls of the trees,
shook open the snowy pleats of their wings, and drifted away,
while, for a keepsake, and to steady myself,
I reached out,
I picked the wild flowers from the grass around me—
blue stars
and blood-red trumpets
on long green stems—
for hours in my trembling hands they glittered
like fire.
UTAD Ecocrítica Lit. Expressão Inglesa Aula sobre ecopoesia 13 Novembro, 2018

Evelyn Reilly Song Of, de SELF (Big Energy Poets, p.173-7)

2.
And why should our bodies end at our skin?
someone asks as Self shakes the water
from its heritage predator pelt
and gets down on all fours
for some joint animal prayers
having just crossed over
the species line to add
some howling braying
to the bulkheads and antennas
before swooping down
with gown shroud
tail feathers trailing
on its way to the zoo
of shared semiotic materiality
Self loves you
so it engages in perpetual exchange
of provisional metaphors
through the bars of our cages
discarding some each day
the crystal thing for example
is incredibly dated
although the non-natural
category part seemed useful
for at least fifteen minutes
here in the relentless emergent
relationality that is the world
Look
at this parka stitched
from whale intestine
these snow goggles carved
from fossil mammoth tusk
in a exhibit called Tool
which we visit for a dose
of human innovative
survival pathos
and let’s examine
this navigational diagram
made solely of sticks
and cowry shells
in order to get from one
oceanic speck to the next
on our journey to becoming true
trans-post-national animal subjects

3.
It can’t be Self ’s personal fault
if the word sacrifice
is a cover for animal murder
(the lamb the god the porkchop)
and we really aren’t feeling so well
UTAD Ecocrítica Lit. Expressão Inglesa Aula sobre ecopoesia 13 Novembro, 2018

after all that imaginary travel

still holdinng our book above
the level of the water
as we pull the plug
to send some Self-fragments
out among the troubled watercourses
which is when the global economy
crashed into us with all its
post-colonial flotsam
and corporate wreckage jetsam
the dead pink blobs bobbing
against the shore where Mrs. Wu
in her leopard-print jacket
jokes There are more pigs
than fish in the Jiapingtang river
and Asheeh and Elena emerge
from shipping containers
for another round
of planetary labor
Many said
they couldn’t watch the videos
they were so painful
and caused a dissociative state
characterized by amnesia
and directionless wandering
while the poet Pan Ting
simply called for a pure stroll
along the water without
banners or slogans
only to be asked afterward
to “drink tea” with the police
turn in her phone and all
other communication devices

Note: Italicized text […] in section 2 [is] from Donna Haraway, Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors that Shape Embryos,
1976; in section 3, “Rivers of blood:the dead pigs rotting in China’s water supply,” The Guardian, March 29, 2013.
Brenda Hillman
Anna Lena Phillips Bell
Lucas de Lima
Kaia Sand
Kate Schapira
Linda Russo
Cecilia
Vicuña