In this Book
- New World Poetics: Nature and the Adamic Imagination of Whitman, Neruda, and Walcott
- Book
- 2007
- Published by: University of Georgia Press
The book introduces the environmental history of the Americas and its relationship to the foundation of American and Latin American studies, explores its relevance to each poet's ambition to recuperate the New World's lost histories, and provides a transnational poetics of understanding literary influence and textual simultaneity in the Americas. The study provides much needed in-depth ecocritical readings of the major poems of the three poets, insisting on the need for thoughtful regard for the challenge to human imagination and culture posed by nature's regenerative powers; nuanced appreciation for the difficulty of balancing the demands of social justice within the context of deep time; and the symptomatic dangers as well as healing potential of human self-consciousness in light of global environmental degradation.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-xi
- Introduction
- pp. 1-15
- Part One
- 2. A New World Poetics
- pp. 42-67
- 3. Reading Whitman in the New World
- pp. 68-104
- Part Two
- 4. Nature's Last Chemistry
- pp. 107-155
- 5. Natural History as Autobiography
- pp. 156-216
- 6. Hemispheric History as Natural History
- pp. 217-276
- Part Three
- 7. The Muse of (Natural) History
- pp. 279-317
- 8. Impressionism in the New World
- pp. 318-354
- Conclusion
- pp. 397-403
- Works Cited
- pp. 413-427