ABSTRACT
This chapter reiterates how the impact of Zen on Williams, Moore, Stevens, and Cummings could expand current definitions of ecopoetics to address the ineffability of reality, acknowledge the insufficiency of reason and language, and recognise the relational agency of the non-human. Most importantly, it emphasises the book’s contribution to Environmental Humanities, particularly by expanding ecopoetics into a more inclusive cosmopoetics. This chapter also traces a lineage from the Zen-inflected American poetics of the early twentieth century, particularly concerning its emphasis on the interweaving of materialism and spirituality in the relationship between human consciousness and non-human beings and environments. Such a lineage follows the influence of the Zen-infused poetics of Williams, Moore, Stevens, and Cummings on poets of the mid-twentieth century onwards, such as Gary Snyder, Lew Welch, Joanne Kyger, Kenneth Rexroth, Philip Whalen, Diane di Prima, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Bob Kaufman, W. S. Merwin, among others.
