ABSTRACT
Gary Snyder’s book Earth House Hold is sometimes taken as an example of ecocriticism (and ecopoetry) avant la lettre. The title plays on the etymology of oikos (as house) and one section posits ‘Housekeeping on Earth’ as a mode of ecological survival, envisioning Earth as a household and the Earth as a house that we must hold onto, i.e. save for the future (1969: 127).1 But the connotations of house or household are not necessarily appropriate to thinking about ecology – who is in the household, who is its head, does anyone leave home, are there neighbours, who built the family home and, if damaged, should it be restored or improved? These questions are only half facetious. The tensions in Snyder’s title between local and global, care and control, inclusion and exclusion, are reminders that while ecocriticism and ecopoetics have both proved popular neologisms, the direction that they take very much depends on what sense of eco, of oikos, is brought to bear by poet or critic. It is a problematic root – as we know all too well from analyses of that other oikos, the economy. As both poetry and ecocriticism have developed, becoming more theoretically
sophisticated and scientifically aware as they draw on other disciplines, descriptions of the oikos have evolved (Snyder’s work itself is a case in point). This chapter charts those changes and some of their implications. The first section tracks the key developments in ecocriticism (and related fields) as it has expanded its purview. Ecocriticism’s early focus on phenomenological engagement and specific places has been modified by more refined considerations of the complex relationships between local and non-local. Humanity’s enmeshment with different materials, objects and processes on multiple scales means that we have to consider what can be described as ‘non-human agency’ alongside more familiar issues such as environmental justice, sustainability or pollution, particularly when it comes to climate change. Also discussed in this section are the ways different poets and theorisations of poetry have responded to, or in some cases anticipated, these matters of concern. The second section focuses on technology, arguing that the ecological impact of technology is intimately related to the fact that, on a fundamental level, technologies always structure humans’ relationships with, and conceptualisations of, their environments. I then build on this posthumanist appraisal of technology to highlight some of the psychological, political and poetic challenges arising from an awareness of
the ‘scale effects’ of quotidian technology use. In the third section I use systems theory to explore how ecology is communicated across different parts of society, and how this poses questions about disciplinarity, aesthetics and the sorts of claims we might make for poetry. Thinking about the Anthropocene requires a constant consideration of different
scales, systems, materials, discourses and technologies. Its interrelated concerns are rendered in contrasting ways by various types of writing. Perhaps it is unsurprising then that reading and writing about poetry in the Anthropocene often requires – to use another derivative of oikos that Snyder also highlights – a relatively ecumenical criticism. In order to explore how poetry’s diverse ways of happening articulate the Anthropocene and its discontents, we have to be prepared to negotiate multiple disciplines, theoretical paradigms and poetic traditions and to ask what sorts of awareness are facilitated, or indeed diminished, through any particular approach.
