The Environmental Imagination in Brazilian Poetry and Art by Malcolm McNee (review)

From the earliest colonial documents well into Romanticism, Modernism, and even contemporary discourse on nature, the notion that the Brazilian territory is an Edenic place of unlimited natural resources predominates. And this notion is also the point of departure from which (and against which) Malcolm McNee examines a wide array of contemporary poetry and visual art produced in Brazil in his book-length study, The Environmental Imagination in Brazilian Poetry and Art.

McNee starts this study with a detailed exposition of past and current theoretical approaches to ecology, ecopoetry, and Earth art. The general direction that seems to be followed by most contemporary artists, critics, and theoreticians can be summed up as a move away from traditional modes of representation and interpretation of nature as something predominantly pictorial, and often inert, toward an embrace of abstraction. Whereas traditional representations of nature were territorial, related to discourses of national identity, contemporary ecopoetry and art tend to address global issues. While tradition represents nature as passive background, contemporary ecologically conscious artistic production tends to represent it as dynamic and interconnected. If Romantic modes of representation preserve notions of subject-centered expressions of nature, contemporary art and poetry tends to blur notions of subject/object in favor of a non-hierarchical representation of natural and human beings. While tradition relies heavily on pastoral, neat figurations of nature, contemporary ecologically minded art favors notions of the “mesh,” ruination, decay, death and rebirth. In sum, the age-old forms of representation of nature are anthropocentric, while contemporary representations attempt at an anti-anthropocentric perspective on nature.

Applying these general theoretical and interpretive considerations, the author offers an analysis of Manuel de Barros’s and Astrid Cabral’s poetry in chapter 2. Manuel de Barros, nicknamed “The Pantaneiro Poet,” is one of the pioneers of ecopoetry in Brazil, with a career that spans several decades. Barros’s poetry, according to McNee, builds upon a cosmogonic representation of the Pantanal. Barros avoids spectacular vistas, focusing instead on the smallest and least perceptible aspects of biological beings that inhabit that location. Barros’s poetry often includes abstractions on topics such as ruination, death, decay, transformation and rebirth. Likewise, McNee analyzes Astrid Cabral’s poetry, finding, on many occasions, similarities between the two poets’ work. Cabral’s poetry focuses on another major ecosystem in Brazil, the Amazon. In common with Barros, Astrid Cabral’s poetry privileges intimate aspects of the space, mixing a wider variety of themes than Barros. Both poets put forth intersubjective perspectives, representing humans and non-humans as equals.

In the third chapter, McNee analyzes Sérgio Medeiros and Josely Vianna Baptista’s ecopoetry production, arguing that their poetry consists predominantly of abstracted meta-landscapes. With emphasis on the process of signification of place, McNee maintains that both authors call attention to the mechanics of the gaze upon its surroundings in contradistinction to the subjective processes involved in the construction of their ambient poetics. McNee also finds additional points of contact between Baptista’s and Medeiros’s poetry in their engagement with global environmental perspective as a move away from debates on national identity, regional, or territorial specificities.

Chapter 4 is dedicated to manifestations of environmental engagement in the visual arts by Frans Krajcberg and Bené Fonteles. McNee points out that Krajcberg is one of the oldest artists still active in Brazil whose work relates to the first-wave environmentalism of the 1960s and 70s. McNee affirms that Krajcberg’s views favor notions of wildness, purity, and spiritual regeneration. In this vein, nature is seen as distinct from the human realm. McNee contends that Fontelles, on the other hand, is a socioenvironmentalist whose art imparts the idea that the protection of Brazil’s environment and biodiversity is part and parcel of an active defense of cultures, territorial rights, and forms of knowledge of the nation’s marginalized communities. Both artists are committed activists and their art sheds light into the intersections of Earth art and...