The Political Is Personal: Juliana Spahr’s Political Ecology

Esther Sánchez-Pardo

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Chapter 5 The Political Is Personal

Juliana Spahr’s Political Ecology

In: Modern Ecopoetry

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Esther Sánchez-Pardo

Esther Sánchez-Pardo
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 111–130

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004445277_006

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Who is the “we” whom Juliana Spahr addresses when writing her poetry and critical essays? Why is the collective so important when speaking about the risks and dangers of capitalism? In Spahr’s views, climate change, indiscriminate production and waste, environmental degradation and human exploitation are part and parcel of the moral hazards of capitalism. In this chapter, I argue that Spahr’s literary practice and her activism are interconnected and side with the concerns of fellow poets and readers in a transnational community—Spahr took part in the original demonstrations of the 2011 New York Occupy Wall Street movement. Focusing on the many and the multiple, rather than on isolated singularities, I reflect upon her emphasis both on “connective reading” (Spahr 2001) very much associated to collective identity, and on her support of the local (flora, fauna, species) versus the global. Spahr’s profound knowledge of Hawaii, where she taught, researched and lived for several years, and her thoughts on impermanence and change, bring about a fresh and engaged language-oriented poetry with a strong insight into the physical and the material-political. In my exploration of Spahr’s poetic practice, word and tone are shape-shifters and run parallel to geographical and environmental displacement.

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Modern Ecopoetry

Reading the Palimpsest of the More-Than-Human World

Series: Nature, Culture and Literature, Volume: 16

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004445277

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 11 Dec 2020

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies

Front Matter

Notes on Contributors

Introduction Finding a Compass to a Commonwealth of Breath

Part 1 Belonging: The Sacred Sense of Place

Chapter 1 The Roots and Affinities of Dylan Thomas in the Works of Claudio Rodríguez

Chapter 2 The Wisdom of Birds in Robert Bringhurst’s Poetry

Part 2 Stubborn Materiality and Environmental Poli^(e)t^(h)ics

Chapter 3 The Agentic Power of Matter in Lorine Niedecker’s “Wintergreen Ridge” and “Paean to Place”

Chapter 4 Of Lyric Temporality and Materiality

Chapter 5 The Political Is Personal

Part 3 Postcolonial Resistance and Neoliberal Toxicity

Chapter 6 Development as Deformation

Chapter 7 Meena Kandasamy’s Contestation of Inherited Cultural Landscapes in Touch

Chapter 8 “Just Junk in a Safeway Cart I’m Pushing Down to the Recycling Center”

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Chapter 5 The Political Is Personal

Juliana Spahr’s Political Ecology

Citation Info

Share link with colleague or librarian

Modern Ecopoetry

Reading the Palimpsest of the More-Than-Human World

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