This is an outdated version published on 2023-12-20. Read the most recent version.

Radical Ecopoetics: The Apocalyptic Vision of Jorie Graham’s Sea Change

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.13.05

Keywords:

Jorie Graham, Sea Change, apocalypse, ecopoetics, emotion, lyric

Abstract

Jorie Graham’s Sea Change (2008) addresses the environmental crisis engendered by climate change, sending us a dire warning of the end of humanity by featuring an apocalyptic world. Sea Change gives a poetic voice to the dynamics of climate change by embodying the catastrophe in linguistic forms and thus enabling us to experience the ecological crisis. For Graham, poetic imagination is an act of physical or bodily engagement as it brings together linguistic and emotional factors into an embodied performance. This paper explores the affective dimension of Graham’s experimental poetry to demonstrate how her radical ecopoetics allows us to (re)engage with the material world, and how it changes our perceptual and sensorial registers to awaken our sense of interconnectedness with nonhuman others.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

  • Gi Taek Ryoo, Chungbuk National University, Korea

    Gi Taek Ryoo is Professor of English at Chungbuk National University, Korea. He has published a number of articles in the field of poetry and science, ecopoetics, and posthumanism. His recent publication includes “The Systemic Nature of Environmental Disaster: Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead” (2021) and “Language and Ecology. The Textual Ecopoetics of Lyn Hejinian’s My Life” (2022). He is particularly interested in the parallel development of poetry and science in the twentieth century.

References

Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke UP, 2007. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv12101zq

Buell, Frederick. From Apocalypse to Way of Life: Environmental Crisis in the American Century. Routledge, 2003. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203484937

Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Harvard UP, 1995. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1nzfgsv

Chakrabaty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 35, no. 2, 2009, pp. 197–222. https://doi.org/10.1086/596640

Crutzen, Paul, and Eugene Stoermer. “The ‘Anthropocene.’” Global Change Newsletter, vol. 41, 2000, pp. 17–18.

Culler, Jonathan. Theory of the Lyric. Harvard UP, 2017. https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.2464-4137-2017-02-02

Damasio, Antonio. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Penguin, 2005.

Damasio, Antonio. “The Importance of Feelings.” Interview by Jason Pontin. MIT Technology Review, 2014, https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/06/17/172310/the-importance-of-feelings accessed 3 June 2022.

Damasio, Antonio, and Gil B. Carvalho. “The Nature of Feelings: Evolutionary and Neurobiological Origins.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 14, 2013, pp. 143–52. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3403

Dibley, Ben. “Nature is Us: The Anthropocene and Species-Bing.” Transformations, vol. 21, 2012, http://www.transformationsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Dibley_Trans21.pdf accessed 3 June 2022.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Modern Library, 2000.

Gore, Al. An Inconvenient Truth. Directed by Davis Guggenheim, Lawrence Bender Productions, 2006.

Graham, Jorie. “An Interview with Jorie Graham.” Interview by Sharon Blackie. EarthLines, vol. 2, 2012, pp. 36–41. Jorie Graham, https://www.joriegraham.com/system/files/Jorie+Graham+Interview.pdf accessed 3 June 2022.

Graham, Jorie. “An Interview with Jorie Graham.” Interview by Thomas Gardner [A]. Denver Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 4, 1992, pp. 79–104.

Graham, Jorie. “Imagining the Unimaginable: Jorie Graham in Conversation.” Interview by Deidre Wengen. Poets.org, 2014, http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/imagining-unimaginable-jorie-graham-conversation accessed 3 June 2022.

Graham, Jorie. Interview by Poets Q&A. Smartish Pace, 2020, https://smartishpace.com/2020/09/jorie-graham/ accessed 3 June 2022.

Graham, Jorie. “Jorie Graham, The Art of Poetry, No. 85.” Interview by Thomas Gardner [B]. The Paris Review, vol. 165, 2003. Jorie Graham, https://www.joriegraham.com/interview_gardner accessed 3 June 2022.

Graham, Jorie. Materialism. The Ecco, 1995.

Graham, Jorie. Sea Change. HarperCollins, 2008.

Graham, Jorie. “The Glorious Thing: Jorie Graham and Mark Wunderlich in Conversation.” Interview by Mark Wunderlich. Poets.org, 23 May 2000, https://poets.org/text/glorious-thing-jorie-graham-and-mark-wunderlich-conversation accessed 3 June 2022.

Griffiths, Matthew. “Jorie Graham’s Sea Change: The Poetics of Sustainability and the Politics of What We’re Sustaining.” Literature and Sustainability, edited by Adeline Johns-Putra et al., Manchester UP, 2017, pp. 211–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1wn0s7q.18

Hansen, James. “Perception of Climate Change.” PNAS, vol. 109, no. 37, 2012, pp. E2415–E2423. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1205276109

Hochschild, Arlie. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. U of California P, 1983.

Keats, John. Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats. Modern Library, 2001.

Keller, Lynn, Recomposing Ecopoetics: North American Poetry of the Self-Conscious Anthropocene. U of Virginia P, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv6sj6qg

Lattig, Sharon. Cognitive Ecopoetics: A New Theory of Lyric. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350069282

Norgaard, Kari M. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life. MIT P, 2011. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262015448.001.0001

McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. Random, 1989.

Ronda, Margaret. Remainders: American Poetry at Nature’s End. Stanford UP, 2018. https://doi.org/10.11126/stanford/9781503603141.001.0001

Ryoo, Gi Taek. “The Ecopoetics of Jorie Graham: Lyric Engagement with the Material World.” The Journal of English Language and Literature, vol. 68, no. 2, 2022, pp. 305–28.

Song, Min Hyoung. Climate Lyricism. Duke UP, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022350

von Holle, Betsy, et al. “Effects of Future Sea Level Rise on Coastal Habitat.” The Journal of Wildlife Management, vol. 83, no. 3, 2019, pp. 694–704. https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.21633

Vreugdenhil, Catherine A., and Bishakhdatta Gayen. “Ocean Convection.” Fluids, vol. 6, no. 360, 2021, pp. 1–20. https://doi.org/10.3390/fluids6100360

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Vintage, 1992.

Woodland, Malcolm. Wallace Stevens and the Apocalyptic Mode. U of Iowa P, 2005.

Downloads

Published

2023-11-27 — Updated on 2023-12-20

Versions

Issue

No. 13 (2023): Literary and Visual Extremities

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Ryoo, Gi Taek. (2023) 2023. “Radical Ecopoetics: The Apocalyptic Vision of Jorie Graham’s Sea Change”. Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, no. 13 (December): 92-108. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.13.05.
Crossref
Scopus
Google Scholar
Europe PMC