<i>Ecopoetic Place-Making: Nature and Mobility in Contemporary American Poetry</i> by Judith Rauscher (A Book Review)

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31261/rias.16401

Keywords:

ecopoetics, place-making, place, mobilities, poetry, oetic Place-Making: Nature and Mobility in Contemporary American Poetry, Judith Rauscher, book review, ecocriticism, mobilities studies, American poetry, American literature

Abstract

Twenty years into the 21st century, the matters of forced mobilities, relocations and displacement are more than ever issues at hand, as we keep on witnessing ceaseless global migratory movements resulting from political persecutions, wars, violence, and/or climate change. Taking the cue from the intersections of environmental transformations, global ecological crisis and human mass mobilities, Judith Rauscher’s Ecopoetic Place-Making (2023) focuses on contemporary “American ecopoetries of migration,” namely the “the oeuvres of […] chosen poets that prominently feature American places and American histories of displacement” (2023: 31).  Drawing mostly from the fields of Ecocriticism and Mobilities Studies, her work explores the complex relationship between migratory subjects and the non-human world, in particular, “the many ways in which human-nature relations are shaped by physical and geographical movement, whether voluntary or forced” (2023: 34) as well as “the varying effects that these displacements in place and between places have […] on the environmental imaginaries in the works of contemporary American poets of migration” (2023: 24).  Ecopoetic Place-Making offers an interesting and thought-provoking analysis of five contemporary authors (Craig Santos Perez, Juliana Spahr, Derek Walcott, Agha Shahid Ali, and Etel Adnan), migrants of different national, cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Drawing inspiration from their own experiences of mobilities, these poets, through their works, challenge restrictive and exclusive ideas of place-attachment. This text is a critical review of Judith Rauscher's monograph.

Author Biography

Carlotta Ferrando, The Sapienza University of Rome/University of Silesia in Katowice

Carlotta Ferrando is a  PhD student in  English Literature, Language and Translation at Sapienza University of Rome (curriculum in Literary Studies), in cotutelle with the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. She graduated in July 2021 with an MA degree from the Programme in Comparative Literatures (University of Turin) having defended her dissertation on contemporary American Literature titled “Family Dynamics in Blank Coming-of-Age Novels: Less Than Zero, The Lost Language of Cranes and Generation X,” after obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Italian Literature. She is currently working on a PhD project focused on the representation of female mental illness in contemporary American novels. She is a member of AISNA.

References

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Cocola, Jim. Places in the Making: A Cultural Geography of American Poetry. U of Iowa P, 2016.

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DeLoughrey, Elizabeth M. “Ecocriticism: The Politics of Place.” The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature. Edited by Michael A. Bucknor and Alison Donnell, Routledge, 2011, pp. 265–275. doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203830352.

DeLoughrey, Elizabeth M. “Toward a Critical Ocean Studies for the Anthropocene.” English Language Notes, vol. 57, no. 1, 2019, pp. 21–36. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-7309655.

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Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard UP, 2011.

Rauscher, Judith. Ecopoetic Place-Making: Nature and Mobility in Contemporary American Poetry. Transcript Verlag, 2023.

Seymour, Nicole. Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination. U of Illinois P, 2013.

Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” Mobilities and Materialities, special issue of Environment and Planning. Edited by Mimi Sheller and John Urry, vol. 38, 2006, pp. 207–226. doi: https://doi.org/10.1068/a37268.

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Published

2023-12-29

How to Cite

Ferrando, C. (2023). <i>Ecopoetic Place-Making: Nature and Mobility in Contemporary American Poetry</i> by Judith Rauscher (A Book Review). Review of International American Studies, 16(2), 195–204. https://doi.org/10.31261/rias.16401

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 2 (2023): Life Matters: The Human Condition in the Age of Pandemics—RIAS Vol. 16, Fall–Winter (2/2023)

Section

REVIEWS

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