Voicing the Terrestrial: Theory of the Lyric and the Pressures of the Anthropocene

Abstract In the present essay, I argue that lyric ecopoetry is particularly suited to alter our worldview in favor of a more ecologically-aware stance. In itself this position has been announced by numerous ecocritics, with some doubts as to its adequacy expressed by Timothy Clark in his Ecocriticism on the Edge. Partly in response to his critique, it is here argued that poems do offer a viable way of altering human modes of thinking not by what or how they evoke but by the way in which they register in the reader’s consciousness. To this effect, I depart from the theories of the lyric advanced in the last two decades by the likes of Jonathan Culler, Derek Attridge and the poet Don Patterson, all of whom argue that lyric poetry differs from any other form of linguistic expression in being itself the event it evokes rather than a representation of an event. This is because by dint of being performed by readers, lyric poems compel one to embrace the voices that comprise them as one’s own, as a result helping one interiorize an experience of ultimate otherness. It is this modus of poetry’s existence that makes it a particularly apt literary form for impelling one to appreciate the complexity of and one’s imbrication in the networks of planetary ecosystems. In this way, as I claim further on, poetry may be conceived of as a vehicle for instilling a form of thinking that Bruno Latour has recently theorized as Terrestrial. For him, the Terrestrial is characterized by what he calls the system of engendering, a way of dwelling in the interrelated systems of the Earth that is reciprocally beneficial for human and non-humans. After an overview of Latour’s idea, which is put forward as a potential political platform, and its relation to the extant theories of environmental humanities that emphasize poetry’s role in conjuring the awareness of the intricacy of natural processes, I suggest that lyric poetry offers not only a means of linguistic expression of the interdependence of all elements in any given ecosystem but also constitutes a language capable of swaying human modes of thinking in favor of the Terrestrial.