Finding Refuge: Sites of Ecological Sanctuary in Nineteenth-Century American Poems
Margaret Ronda
University of California, Davis
Margaret Ronda teaches American poetry and environmental studies at the University of California-Davis. She is the author of Remainders: American Poetry at Nature’s End (Stanford University Press, Post*45 Series, forthcoming 2018) and two collections of poetry. Her articles have appeared in journals such as PMLA, Post-45, Genre, and ELN and in the edited volumes Prismatic Ecology: Ecotheory Beyond Green, Veer Ecology, Created Unequal: Class and the Making of American Literature, and A History of Twentieth-Century American Women’s Poetry.
Abstract
Margaret Ronda, UC-DavisIn ecological terms, refugia refers to places that facilitate the survival of threatened species or that otherwise provide sanctuary for biodiversity in the midst of larger ecosystemic changes. In a... [ view full abstract ]
Margaret Ronda, UC-Davis
In ecological terms, refugia refers to places that facilitate the survival of threatened species or that otherwise provide sanctuary for biodiversity in the midst of larger ecosystemic changes. In a more general sense, refuge connotes spaces that allow for the safety and flourishing of vulnerable beings. This paper surveys a variety of nineteenth-century American poems that present imaginative spaces of refuge, however contingent, from broader developmental patterns associated with the rise of extractivist capitalism and resource colonialism, such as forest and prairie clearing, forced Native American migration, and the economies and ecologies of the slave system. Turning to poems by Lydia Sigourney, Albery Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Sidney Lanier, and William Vaughn Moody, this paper examines their conjurings of refuge as a spatial, material, and affective phenomenon, often evoked through intricate descriptions of a particular ecological locale and its patterns of life as they undergo change. Some of these works also point to specific sites as harbors for displaced populations or meditate on the heightened potential for perishability of particular life forms. I argue that the formal qualities of these poems, from their patterns of repetition and refrain to their phenological descriptions, generate a poetics attuned to precarious existences, human and nonhuman.
Authors
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Margaret Ronda
(University of California, Davis)
Topic Area
Panel
Session
P63 » Approaches to Nineteenth-Century American Poetry & the Environment (08:30 - Saturday, 24th March, Enchantment B)
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