Reincarnations

Abstract

Abstract to Reincarnations Reincarnations blends Confessional influences, ecopoetic and ecofeminist perspectives, and poetry of the occult. Through this unique mixture of theory, I have attempted to make a connection between the self, politics, and location. Reincarnations travels through Washington State, Kansas, and Oklahoma, exploring themes unique to each landscape while also incorporating a narrative “I” through-line. In each landscape, the confessional voice merges with ecopoetic theory to draw the connection between the body, mind, the land, and greater environmental considerations. My constant poetic influence has been the American Confessional movement of the 1950’s and 60’s, hallmarked by writers such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, and W.D. Snodgrass, because of the use of personal experience and introspection as a tool for political counter discourse. Throughout Reincarnations, the theme of forbidden sexuality and its cultural ramifications is almost ever-present. The poem “Discontent” examines the question of female location and gendered spheres by alternating stanzas exploring possible lifestyles; one aspect of the poem offers traditional images of domesticity such as a large house, a husband, baby, and private spheres inside the home, such as the kitchen, which has been culturally gendered as a female space. On the flipside of the poem, the narrator unleashes her desires for the opposite of domesticity—dive bars, sex in public restrooms, and transience, as a counterweight to show female liberation from a destiny that was once considered perfunctory. This second thread of the poem places the narrator in male gendered spheres outside of the home. The poem is careful not to place negative judgement upon either lifestyle, highlighting the feminist ethos of women’s right to choose their own futures. One critique of the Confessionalist movement was that it only had room for narratives of white, cisgender, straight, and financial privilege and was not inclusive to those who were considered outside the dominant culture or discourse, such as people of color, those of lower economic means, and members of LGBTQ+ communities. Susan Bordo asserts, “the body ... is a medium of culture. ... [The] commitments of a culture are inscribed and reinforced through ... the body. ... Our conscious politics [and] social commitments ... [are often] undermined and betrayed by ... our bodies” (Tunc). Bordo points out that the body and politics are inseparable. Non-white, and especially female, bodies have been historically underrepresented due to insidious institutionalized racism and sexism. In “Confessionalism Birthed from Feminism”, Melinda Wilson points out the true aims of Confessionalism: “The Confessional movement began to construct a literary environment in which other voices of difference could write about their experiences” (Wilson). It began as a white-washed mode, but over time, Confessionalism has begun to embrace a multitude of different identities, although the legacy of its origins remains that the most widely documented and touted of the original Confessionalists such as Sexton, Plath, Lowell, and Berryman were all white, and have been criticized over racial ignorance in some of their pieces. Adrienne Rich states, “Without an articulate lesbian/feminist movement, lesbian writing would still be lying in that closet” (Wilson). Intersectional feminism has influenced post-Confessionalism to include a broader spectrum of identity. I hope to add to that conversation by standing in solidarity with historically marginalized groups in my creative work. Intersectional feminism and post-confessional poetry are now irrevocably intertwined. Morgan Parker’s Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night (2015) expands the scope of traditional Confessionalism by exploring African American female identity through the use of that “I”, or personal narrative, in which Confessionalism is steeped. As I was writing Reincarnations, it was important for me to not speak on behalf of those whose identities I do not inhabit, and it was paramount for me to recognize and pay respect to the struggles other women face. In the poem “Straight Men at the Bar”, the narrator recalls moments of misogyny she and her significant other have experienced at the hands of straight men because the two women are in a same sex relationship, as well as confrontational moments between her partner and different men who single her out because of her masculine-leaning gender expression. The narrator stands in solidarity with her partner who may be called an “angry black butch bitch” by those same straight men at the bar. My use of the narrative “I” is a continuation of speaking not only for myself, but also allowing other women to identify with the content of politically motivated pieces, and calling attention to issues many women face and situations many women have experienced but that are underrepresented. Another critical backdrop that Reincarnations is in conversation with is the tradition of ecopoetry. In the creation of Reincarnations, one of the most paradigm-shifting discoveries for me was ecopoetic theory and what divides ecopoetry from nature poetry. Nature poetry is poetry that does not recognize the complexities of human’s relationship to the world, and instead relies upon an almost-pastoral, idealized view of the land, that tends to glorify the beauty of nature but not recognize the fraught relationship between humanity and this Earth. J. Scott Bryson, a prominent ecopoetry theorist, defines ecopoetry and its characteristics, and how it separate from nature poetry: Ecopoetry is a subset of nature poetry that, while adhering to certain conventions of romanticism, also advances beyond that tradition and takes on distinctly contemporary problems and issues, thus resulting in a version of nature poetry generally marked by three primary characteristics. The first is an emphasis on maintaining an eccentric perspective that recognizes the interdependent nature of the world; such a perspective leads to a devotion to specific places and to the land itself, along with those creatures that share it with mankind. The awareness of the world as a community tends to produce the second attribute of ecopoetry: an imperative toward humility in relationships with both human and nonhuman nature. Related to this humility is the third attribute of ecopoetry: an intense skepticism concerning hyper rationality, a skepticism that usually leads to an indictment of an over technologized modern world and a warning concerning the very real potential for ecological catastrophe. (5) Poems such as “Text of Puget Sound” and “Water Year” can be described as post-pastoral, in that the landscapes discussed are not idealized or romanticized, and the poems are instead brutally honest about the devastation that is inflicted upon environments, and could be considered firmly in the ecopoetry tradition. Out of ecopoetry’s three main characteristics, perhaps Reincarnations most prominently engages with the third. When thinking about the idea of apocalypse, I was inspired by Octavia Butler’s representation of apocalypse in her 1993 book, Parable of the Sower, wherein Butler shows readers the implications of humankind’s destruction of our environment and its resources. My poem “Future Child” is meant to give readers an idea of possible ways the end of our world could be brought about by further abuse of our environment. Connected to Bryson’s third pillar of ecopoetry is Gilles Clement’s philosophy of the “third landscape”. The third landscape is what is left over of nature after humans have vanished—abandoned buildings, crumbling infrastructure, what is left behind. Jonathan Skinner’s essay in the EcoLanguage Reader, “Thoughts on Things: Poetics of the Third Landscape” defines the first landscape as almost “idealized pastoral”, or what I have described as nature poetry. Skinner evades defining the second landscape, but if the pastoral is placed in the past, and the post-human is placed in the future, one might infer that the second landscape could be located in our present-- cityscapes or urban landscape, or, more generally, human-occupied landscapes. I have found myself trying to blend my two major influences, Confessionalism and ecopoetry, and have discovered other poets who may be attempting the same task. In his book, Ecodeviance: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness (2014), CA Conrad urges his readers to take action against the contemporary human condition of isolation and loneliness at the hands of capitalism through encouraging us to be unafraid of and to live outside social constructions of normality. In his “Introduction to (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals” (xi), Conrad notes that he was born and raised in a factory town, where he saw the people he loved reduced to instruments of the factory—machines of capitalism. He then discusses what he sees as what humans need the most during these times: the need to be “present”, or autonomous, free to be creative and live lives that are unique and colorful. Conrad represents the factory as draining upon individuality, as well as a force of destruction on the natural world. Throughout Ecodeviance, Conrad offers the reader a series of prompts or challenges to do outrageous acts and to write about them, or ways of living in the moment and resisting the cycles to which many people fall victim. Conrad also sporadically threads pieces where he discusses personal trials and tribulations surrounding his identity as a gay man in America, thus blending his personal narrative with themes of ecopoetry. A point of juncture between my interest in ecopoetry and post-Confessional intersectional feminism is ecofeminism, which from Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy can be defined as: “Ecofeminism is a practical movement for social change that discerns interconnections among all forms of oppression: the exploitation of nature, the oppression of women, class exploitation, racism, colonialism. Against binary divisions such as self/other, culture/nature, man/woman, humans/animals, white/nonwhite, ecofeminist theory asserts that human identity is shaped more by fluid relationships and by acknowledgment of both connection and difference.” (back cover) The relationship between female experience and environment/landscape is prevalent throughout Reincarnations, as exemplified by my poem “Entering Kansas”. In the piece, the narrator is driving into Kansas for the first time and noticing signs that deride abortion and praise religion. In this new state, she notices sexism in new and pervasive ways, such as a man yelling at her boyfriend to “take care of that girl tonight”. Each incident is catalogued in connection to where it happens in the state. One way that I attempted to make the connection between gender and landscape in Reincarnations is through the figure of the witch. Historically, witches have been seen as women who live outside the bounds of society for a multitude of possible reasons, including their sexuality, disposition, and socioeconomic class, or women who were somehow outside of ideal womanhood in some way. I wanted to reclaim the figure of the witch. The moniker of ‘witch’ was a death sentence for many women throughout history, and America had its own dark period of witch-frenzy in Salem Massachusetts in the late 1600’s. I wanted to reclaim the word and imbue it with power and productive resistance. In Reincarnations, a witch is a woman who lives outside or on the edges of society, and who doesn’t conform to cultural structures of ideal femaleness, and represents a feral womanhood. Even further, witches are agents of environmental reclamation who protect the land from forces of destruction, aligning closely with ecofeminist goals: These [ecofeminist] struggles are waged against the ‘maldevelopment’ and environmental degradation caused by patriarchal societies, multinational corporations, and global capitalism. They are waged for environmental balance, heterarchical and matrifocal societies, the continuance of indigenous cultures, and economic values and programs based on subsistence and sustainability. (Gaard 2) One place where this is most clearly manifest is in “Scenic Prairie Hills”, where a man has built a house on rural prairie land, representing invasion and destruction. The man, John, ruminates about his lost his job in the chemical industry, due to allowing illegal dumping of chemical waste into water sources. He notices his dog acting strangely as they move into the house, and John has two supernatural encounters himself before the story culminates with a witch possessing the man’s dog and attacking him through it, effectively clearing him off the land. Throughout my explorations, I was guided by questions such as: “Where do the bodies of the land and the human meet?” “How can I represent women as resistors of environmental oppression?” and “How can I give voice to experiences and concerns many women face?” In my creative work, I hope to create an intersection between contemporary feminist Confessionalism and Ecopoetics and Ecofeminism through my use of the narrative “I” and the poetics of place and politics. Works Cited Bryson, J. Scott, ed. Ecopoetry: A Critical Introduction. Salt Lake City: U of Utah, 2002. Print. Conrad, C. A. Ecodeviance: (soma)tics for the Future Wilderness. First ed. Seattle: Wave, 2014. Print. Gaard, Greta Claire, and Patrick D. Murphy, eds. Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy. Urbana: U of Illinois, 1998. Print. Iijima, Brenda, ed. )((eco(lang)(uage(reader)). Brooklyn, NY: Portable at Yo-Yo Labs and Nightboat, 2010. Print. Parker, Morgan. Other People's Comfort Keeps Me up at Night. First ed. Chicago: Switchback, 2015. Print. Tunc, Tanfer Emin. "RIVERS OF THE BODY: FLUIDITY AS A REPRODUCTIVE METAPHOR IN AMERICAN FEMINIST (POST)CONFESSIONAL ECOPOETRY." Women's Studies 42.2 (2013): 113-39. Web. 1 Apr. 2017. Wilson, Melinda. "Confessionalism Birthed from Feminism." Coldfront. Coldront Magazine, 15 Sept. 2014. Web. 01 Apr. 2017.