Ecopoetics: The Language of Nature, the Nature of Language by Scott Knickerbocker (review)

In Ecopoetics: The Language of Nature, the Nature of Language Scott Knickerbocker attempts to expand the boundaries of what can be considered nature writing, as well as who can be considered a nature poet. Knickerbocker hopes to take ecocriticism past stalled arguments and into a new, less divisive future. Interestingly, Knickerbocker showcases this possible future by first looking back to four poets we don’t normally think of as nature poets: Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, and Sylvia Plath.

Ecopoetics has three main sections. In “Introduction: The Language of Nature, the Nature of Language” Knickerbocker defines two key ingredients for what he believes constitutes the new terms of nature writing: “sensuous poesis” and “artifice,” the use of figurative language such as metaphor, personification, and apostrophe. Knickerbocker states that sensuous poesis is “the process of rematerializing language specifically as a response to nonhuman nature” (2). He argues that using “artifice” helps the poets he writes about to understand nature (2). Knickerbocker then gives a close reading of “A Bird, came down the Walk—” by Emily Dickinson and “The Windhover: To Christ our Lord” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. He stresses the sounds each poet employs to try and unite human written language with the voice(s) of nature and thereby achieve a state of wonder in the reader. (I think Knickerbocker would like to inculcate this sense of wonder into ecocritics as well.)

The next section, the largest, comprises four chapters, one for each poet under discussion. Knickerbocker uses many resources, including biographies, a range of literary critics, published letters and journals of each poet, and his own critical readings of key poems. Each poet carries a reputation that seemingly keeps ecocritics from engaging with their work. Stevens privileges imagination over nature, Bishop is merely descriptive and too formal, Wilbur champions aesthetics over ecoethics, and Plath is too confessional. Knickerbocker redirects our notions of what these poets were trying to achieve and shows how their use of language and poetical forms is in concert with the ethics of ecopoetics. For Knickerbocker these four poets become nature writers.

In the last section, “Conclusion: Organic Formalism and Contemporary Poetry,” Knickerbocker looks at some forces currently driving poetry. He focuses on three writers: Marilyn Nelson, Susan Howe, and John Witte. Each writer represents a branch of contemporary writing: New Formalism, Language Poetry, and what Knickerbocker terms “organic formalism.” This section serves as a template as to how ecocritics might, or should, go about exploring contemporary voices. Knickerbocker finds nature writers in the strangest of habitats, including Language Poetry!

Scott Knickerbocker writes engagingly and clearly about the history of ecocriticism, the forces and critics that have helped shape it, and the work that remains to be done. I enjoyed the many sources Knickerbocker uses for his discussions and analyses. Some readers looking for material about western themes might be disappointed. And others might feel that Knickerbocker’s definition of what is a part of nature is so broad that almost every poet can potentially be considered a nature writer.