"Green" poetry and ecolization of everyday vocabulary

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“Green” poetry and ecolization of everyday vocabulary

Tetiana Starostenko,

Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor, Associate Professor at the English Philology Department H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University (Kharkiv, Ukraine)

The article retraces contemporary experimental poetry of ecosophical nature, discovering its thematic paradigms, intertextuality, symbolism, and the main concepts. The research distinguishes between traditional “nature” poetry and eco-texts. There have been highlighted the leading directions of “green” lyrics, such as topo-poetics, geo-poetics and ethnopoetics. In the course of the investigation it has been proved that the eco-texts are searching for a new paradigm of human and nature relations, raise the topics of corruption of the city life, overpopulation and the violation of the interhuman space. In the modern eco-poetry there have been used the images of queer sexual relationships as a metaphor conveying the problem of white dominance and suppression of ethnical minorities - the victims of post-colonial era. The loving melody of traditional “nature poetry” in “green” literature is substituted by anger, directness, atrocious metaphorization, horrifying images of the planet in agony. The stereotypical object of nature poetry the “beautiful bird” in ecological chants is reframed into a bulldozer destroying the bird's habitat. It has been stressed that the earlier human- centered approach to nature, currently giving its way to biocentric equality, stems from the religious texts of JudoChristian origin. There has been denoted the link between exploitation of women and nature, individual self-destruction and the termination of the outer world.

As a result of the analysis it has been discovered that the ecological concerns have generated a broad ecologicolized vocabulary with dominant eco-lexemes, entering both poetic text and the sphere of social, political and cultural interaction.

Key words: biocentric equality, ecologization, ecosophy, eco-ethics, planetary condition.

«Зелена» поезія та екологізація повсякденної лексики

Тетяна СТАРОСТЕНКО,

кандидат філологічних наук, доцент, доцент кафедри англійської філології Харківського національного педагогічного університету імені Г. С. Сковороди (Харків, Україна)

У статті простежується специфіка сучасної експериментальної поезії екософічного характеру, викриваються її тематичні парадигми, встановлюється характер інтертекстуальних зав'язків, символізм та окреслюються основні поняття. У дослідженні розрізняються традиційна «поезія природи» та екотексти. Виділяються провідні напрямки «зеленої» лірики, такі як топо-поетика, гео-поетика та етно-поетика. У ході дослідження доводиться, що екотексти націлені на генерування нової парадигми взаємовідносин людини і природи, порушують теми деструктивного характеру міського життя, перенаселення та взаємовторгнення індивідуумів у особистий простір. У сучасній екопоезії використовуються метафоричні образи сексуальних стосунків квірів, що передають проблему домінування білої людини над етнічними меншинами - жертвами постколоніальної епохи. Любовна мелодія традиційної «поезії природи» в «зеленій» літературі трансформується у гнів, неприховану прямоту, жахаючу метафоризацію, пекельні образи планети в агонії. Стереотипний об'єкт природної поезії «прекрасний птах» в екологічній ліриці перетворюється на бульдозер, що руйнує середовище проживання птаха. Наголошується, що попередній підхід до природи, орієнтований на людину як вищу сутність усього живого, що нині поступається біоцентричної рівності, сягає корінням релігійних текстів іудейсько-християнського походження. Позначено зв'язок між експлуатацією жінки та природи, індивідуальним самознищенням і руйнацією зовнішнього світу.

У результаті аналізу було виявлено, що екологічні проблеми сприяли виникненню широкого екологікалізовано- го лексичного пласту із домінантними еколексемами, що увійшли як до поетичних текстів, так і у сферу соціальних, політичних та культурних відносин.

Ключові слова: біоцентричнарівність, екологізація, екософія, еко-етика, планетарний стан.

The statement of the problem

The concept of “human ecology”, initially “human biology”, originated in 1837 and was formulated by Auguste Comte to be later developed by Mechnikov in his The Nature of Man (1903) and Studies in Optimistic Philosophy (1907). Nowadays the idea of biocentric equality has deeply penetrated both social philosophy and international politics, which found its reflection in poetic language and everyday vocabulary.

The analysis of the investigations

“Green” issues have been studied from multiple points of view by sociologists, philosophers, linguists and literary critics. The researches of the XXIst century focus on ecosophy (or ecological philosophy), Judo-Christian attitude to nature and “the unity of man and nature in the context of various spiritual traditions, such as Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, the religions of the aborigines of America, Africa and Australia” (Shapoval V.N. Ecophilosophy and deep ecology: the search for a new paradigm of human and nature relations, 2018). The concepts of “deep ecology”, feminism and wild nature in the nuclear age were retraced in a similar work by Bill Devall and George Sessions Deep Ecology (1985, 2005). Neological representations of the concept of ECOLOGY and its structural-semantic peculiarities in English media discourse were analyzed by Chepurnaya M.A. in 2020. The aspects of environmental education were investigated by A. Gus- lyakova, N. Valeeva and O. Vatkova in 2020. Linguistic representation of the concept ENVIRONMENT in the English language was studied by N.V. Kuznetsova and A.N. Liebiedieva in 2012. The issues of eco-ethical poetry were highlighted by Harriet Tarlo (Sheffield Hallam University) in his article Recycles: the Eco-Ethical Poetics of Found Text in Contemporary Poetry (Journal of Ecocriticism, 1(2) July, 2009).

Despite the scientific interest to the “green issues”, the investigations devoted to the functioning of eco-neologisms are predominantly limited by media discourse. The studies of eco-poetry are still rather embryonic, which outlines the potential for further research.

The aim of the article is to retrace contemporary experimental poetry of ecosophical nature, and to analyze the problem of ecolization of everyday vocabulary within the poetic frame.

The delivery of the main body of the research

poetry ecolization everyday vocabulary

The rudiments of “nature poetry” date back pastoral and later romantic traditions in both Eastern and Western language literature. “Pastoral literature is a class of literature that presents the society of shepherds as free from the complexity and corruption of city life” [8]. Eco-poetry, on the other hand, emphasizes the relationship between nature and culture, language and perception.

The impact of the human being on the nonhuman world has been highlighted since the time of the ancient sacred texts. Thus, Arne Naess criticizes the Judo-Christian attitude to nature: “The man's self-concealment revealed in the Bible consists in the idea of superiority of being an intermediary between the creator and the creation. <.. .> This belief made the human, without any justification; consider himself as a supreme being, and all other living beings only as a means for satisfying his needs that are often not rational. Considering the right to life as his natural inalienable right, he denied the existence of such a right in all other animals and plants, subjecting entire species to extirpation” (Naess, 1989: 187). The contemporary concepts, on the contrary, proclaim “the Earth above all”. N. Reimers concludes: “our planet comes first, and the human, whose social and other opportunities are limited, comes second. This is no longer a science, but a biocentric social movement” (Reimers, 1994: 22).

Poetry has always tended to reflect on the relationships with the world beyond the human. The bound-aries of eco-poetry embrace the variety of terms, like topo-poetics (or place making), geo-poetics (Earth making), ethnopoetics (the term coined in 1968 by Jerome Rothenberg and refers to non-Western, non-ca- nonical poetries, often those coming from ancient and autochthonous cultures). The element “eco” derives from the Greek “oikos”, which is “household”. This constitutes the equation “our earth = our home”. The fragment “topo” stems from “topos” = “the place”. The Greek prefix “geo” embraces the notions “the earth”, “land”, “ground country”, “soil” (Wilkinson, 2021).

The fringe between “nature poetry” and “eco-poetry” was metaphorized by Julia Spahr, “who notes the necessity of accounting for both the “beautiful bird” (the stereotypical object of nature poetry) and the “bulldozer off to the side that was destroying the bird's habitat” (what makes it eco-poetry). In this for-mulation, traditional nature poetry is based on a separation of the natural world from the human world and insists on the otherworldliness of natural objects as beautiful, innocent, or awe-inspiring. Eco-poetry, on the other hand, is more focused on the ways we make the house of earth into a home, and all the ways we do that badly” (Wilkinson, 2021).

Thus, eco-poetry conceptually can be viewed as more progressive from traditional descriptive nature poetry of the “lakers” (William Blake, William Wordsworth) and later romanticists (John Kits). “Green” poetry is characterized by the extensive use of repetition, parataxis, multiple points of view, prose fragments, and the incorporation of existing texts “to avoid this sense of gifted individual sensitivity to “nature” (Wilkinson, 2021).

“Green” poetry has an emphasis on ecological message. The bulk of ecological poetic texts embraces: the book Ecopoemas by Nicanor Parra (1982); The White Poem by Jay Ramsay and Carole Bruce (1988); The Green Book of Poetry by Ivo Mosley (1995, and 1996 as Earth Poems), Bosco (1999; 2001) and Heavy Water: a poem for Chernobyl (2004); Entering the City (1997), Dog Sonnets (1998), the 500-plus page collection Red Car Goes By (2001) by Jack Col- lom; Fuck You-Aloha-I Love You (2001) by Juliana Spahr; Political Cactus Poems (2005) by Jonathan Skinner; The Ecopoetry Anthology (2012), edited by Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura Gray Street; Science and Steepleflower (1998); Torn Awake (2001), Eye Against Eye (2005) and Be With (2018) by poet Forrest Gander. According to James Engelhardt, “green” poetry is “surrounded by questions of ethics” and is “connected to the world in a way that implies responsibility”. Contemporary poets with ethnopoetic motifs include Gary Snyder, Kathleen Stewart, and William Bright. Environmental literature appeals to ecological harmony and equilibrium between humans and nature, urging for ecological wisdom, indigenous religion and cultural practices.

In his Nature Poem (2017) Tommy Pico combines the themes of racial atrocity, culture's relationship to nature, in particular challenges for the Native Americans in the imposed “white” world and a general ver-ity about their beliefs (a shared understanding of the natural world as spiritual, animated by spirit, and as a space to which we humans, as part of it, owe respect), queer sexual relationships:

“This white guy asks do I feel more connected to nature

bc I'm NDN

asks did I live like in a regular house growing up on the rez or something more salt of the earth, something reedy says it's hot do I have any rain ceremonies

When I express frustration, he says what? He says I'm just asking as if

being earnest somehow absolves him from being fucked up.

It does not.

He says I can't win with you

because he already did

because he always will

because he could write a nature

poem, or anything he wants, he doesn't understand

why I can't write a fucking nature

poem.

Later when he is fucking

me I bite him on the cheek draw blood I reify savage lust”

Tommy Pico. Nature Poem, Tin House Books,

2017.

Remarkably that in the poem the voice is granted exclusively to the white man. The text represents the reduction of a respect for nature; the suppression of the Native American voice, and depicts a victim of sexual stereotyping, when the perpetrator is a white man. Thus, the only seemingly equal plane for two men (natural and non-verbal), transforms into a troubled one, since the white sex is about “fucking”, whereas Native American sex is viewed as “reification of savage lust”. Finally, in the course of the poem racial stereotyping comes on top, making the Native American feel uncomfortable and self-demeaning, bringing the idea of hierarchy. Etymological parameters are also rather intertextual: the word “fucking” derives from Anglo-Saxon, whereas “reify” is a more complicated notion of Latin origin.

Kia Sand in her Tiny Arctic Ice poem, which is a part of A Tale of Magician's Who Puffed Up Money That Lost Its Puff collection (2016), depicts ecological crisis by means of social interaction:

“Inhale, exhale 6.6 billion people breathing Some of us in captivity Our crops far-flung

Prison is a place where children sometimes visit Jetted from Japan, edamame is eaten in England Airplane air is hard to share I breathe in what you breathe out, stranger”.

Kia Sand. Tiny Arctic Ice, excerpt, 2016. The poem diagnosis a planetary condition. Articulating sensorial disaster, the text draws connection between the environmental, economic and political systems, raises the issues of agriculture, food transportation and overpopulation. Breathing intimacy between strangers is an absorption of the consequences of ecological crisis.

To some extent, eco-poetry has stemmed from more traditional nature poetry with an emphasis on the beauty of singular objects of nature:

“Mulberry-bushes where the boy would run To fill his hands with fruit are grubbed and done And hedgrow-briars - flower-lovers overjoyed Came and gotflower-pots - these are all destroyed And sky-bound mores in mangled garbs are left Like mighty giants of their limbs bereft Fence now meets fence in owners' little bounds Of field and meadow large as garden grounds In little parcels little minds to please With men and flocks imprisoned ill at ease”.

John Clare. The Mores, 1820.

The hearing eye of eco-poetry avoids individual sensitivity to nature. “Green” poetry is marked by the hybridization of a healthy sense of humor, irony, historical context and social moments, landscapes, full of viruses and bacteria, fractured nature, climate change, boundaries of the human and natural worlds. Eco-texts can be of “archeological” nature, containing of a number sub-messages.

The poems of Juliana Spahr are focused on suicidal aspects of human behavior, destructive for the outer world:

“there are things people can do to themselves they are:

leave molotov cocktail on own yard set fire to own house leave a glass of urine on own porch leave envelope of feces outside own door send a butcher knife to self at work send letter to health department that self is spreading v.d. stab own back”

Juliana Spahr. Response collection, 2002. The image of a pregnant woman distorting the body of her second child is vivid and merciless. The reader following the lines of Spahr's poem, becomes a witness of a legalized killing, when a mother, who is traditionally should be associated with the fertile forces of nature, is dehumanizing her baby-to-be, depriving it of the right for being a part of the outer natural world:

“mutilated claims

fetuses or the organs of elimination are missing a woman who is carrying twins, for instance, might have one removed so only a single twin remains

or a fetus removedfrom a body by a sucking machine or the rectal area perfectly cored out of a body found on the side of the road

or puncture wounds due to needles and probes on the head, the fingers, the leg

at other times instead of removal insertion, multiplication

one half being, one half human children”

Juliana Spahr. Response collection, 2002. And in her another poem from the same collection Juliana Spahr stands against war and nuclear weapon, imposed on humanity by “them”, those who are “pressing” us: testimony:

“they close our eyes”

“our voices are made silent”

“our ears are made deaf”

“we will never be the same again”

Juliana Spahr. Response collection, 2002.

A powerful sense of anger directed against distortion with nature, disintegration, extinction and fragmentation finds its manifestation in multiple eco-texts of the XXIst century.

Ecological concerns find their implementation in the new branch of philosophy, literature, both social and gender movements (eco-feminism), demanding for the vocabulary upgrade. Eco-centrism has generated a number of eco-expressions with a “climate” lexeme, like: “climate smart” - a person, helping to prevent climate change; “climate gentrification” - the process by which a place that is thought to be less at risk of the effects of climate change turns from a poor area to a richer one; “climate justice” - the holding to account of those responsible for climate change and reparation for those most affected by it [14], or “climatarian” - choosing to eat a diet that has minimal impact on the climate, i.e. one that excludes food transported a long way or meat whose production gives rise to 74 CO2 emissions, a word formed by the analogy of the word “vegetarian”; “cli-fi” - climate fiction, as the analogy to “sci-fy” [2]; “climate refugee” - a person who has been forced to relocate due to changing climate or to a disaster caused by or associated with climate change; “climate canary” - a natural phenomenon or event that signals a looming environmental disaster caused by climate change [3]; “climate porn” - extreme or alarmist language or images used to describe the current or future effects of man-made climate change [5].

There developed a number of expressions with a destructive “bomb” or “-nado” (coming from “tornado”) element: “weather bomb” - a winter storm that has a sudden drop in pressure at the center, causing very strong cold winds [5]; “carbon bomb” - a set of conditions that will likely give rise to a catastrophic increase in carbon emissions in the future [3]; “firenado” - a fire tornado: a strong, dangerous wind created by a large fire that forms itself into an upside- down spinning cone [5]; “snownado” - a waterspout that forms between the surface of a lake and a snow squall; a tornado that forms over a snow-covered area. Also: snonado [15].

“Eco-” particle is present in such words as: “eco-sceptic” - a person, who is skeptical towards eco-radicalism; “eco-porn” - a commercial campaign for the environmental protection; “eco-anxiety” - concerns about the future ecological situation on the planet; “eco-guard” - a person fighting against the violence towards animals; “ecotage” or “ecoterrorism” - illegal actions of the ecologists (granting freedom to the caged animals, campaigns against deforestation, extermination of genetically modified crops).

Conclusions

Thus, the contemporary experimental poetry of ecosophical nature is a loud voice, chanting about the urgent problems of globalized humanity and a suffering exploited eco-system. The loving melody of traditional “nature poetry” in “green” literature is substituted by anger, directness, atrocious metaphorization, horrifying images of the planet in agony. The prevailing topics embrace: overpopulation issues, racism, white dominance, the destructiveness brought by Anglo-Saxons towards the Native Americans, agriculture, food transportation, consequences of ecological crisis, individual self-destruction, the connection between women and nature, war and nuclear weapon. The ecological concerns have generated a broad ecologicolized vocabulary with dominant eco-lexemes, entering both poetic text and the sphere of social, political and cultural interaction.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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4. Devall, B., Sessions, G. (1985). DEEP ECOLOGY. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher Peregrine Smith Books. 264 p.

6. Morton, T. (2007). Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetic. Cambridge: Harvard. 264 p.

7. Naess, Arne. (1989). Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 223 p.

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13. Tarlo, H. (2009). Recycles: the Eco-Ethical Poetics ofFound Text in Contemporary Poetry. Journal of Ecocriticism 1 (2) July. Pp. 114-130. URL: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.856.5827&rep=rep1&type=pdf (viewed 20 January, 2022).

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REFERENCES

1. Clare, J. (1820). The Mores. URL: https://threeacresandacow.co.uk/2014/07/the-mores-by-john-clare/ (viewed 23 January, 2022).

2. Cambridge Dictionaries Online. URL: http://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org. (viewed 19 January, 2022).

3. Collins English Dictionary Online. URL: http://www.collinsdictionary.com (viewed 20 January, 2022).

4. Devall, B., Sessions, G. (1985). DEEP ECOLOGY. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher Peregrine Smith Books. 264 p.

5. Dictionary.com Online. URL: https://www.dictionary.com/ (viewed 10 January, 2022).

6. Morton, T. (2007). Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetic. Cambridge: Harvard. 264 p.

7. Naess, Arne. (1989). Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 223 p.

8. Pastoral literature. URL: https://www.britannica.com/art/pastoral-literature (viewed 20 January, 2022).

9. Pico, T. Nature Poem. URL: https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/engl-090-fall2018/files/2015/01/PicoNaturePoem. pdf (viewed 23 January, 2022).

10. Reimers, N.F. (1994). Ecology (theories, laws, rules, principles and hypotheses). Moscow: Young Russia. 367 p.

11. Sand, K. Tiny Arctic Ice. URL: http://jacketmagazine.com/35/dk-sand-poem.shtml (viewed 20 January, 2022).

12. Spahr, J. (2002). Response. Sun & Moon Books. 84 p. URL: https://www.ubu.com/ubu/pdf/spahr_response.pdf (viewed 20 January, 2022).

13. Tarlo, H. (2009). Recycles: the Eco-Ethical Poetics of Found Text in Contemporary Poetry. Journal of Ecocriticism 1 (2) July. Pp. 114-130. URL: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.856.5827&rep=rep1&type=pdf (viewed 20 January, 2022).

14. Unwords online. URL: http://unwords.com/ (viewed 20 January, 2022).

15. Urban Dictionary Online. URL: https://www.urbandictionary.com/ (viewed 20 January, 2022).

16. Wilkinson, K. The eco-poetry that shaped me. URL: http://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/index.php/2021/10/ on-eco-poetry/ (viewed 22 January, 2022).

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