'Earth and human together form a unique being': Contemporary American women's ecological poetry

In this dissertation I examine how five contemporary U.S. women poets, Denise Levertov, Mary Oliver, Lucille Clifton, Linda Hogan, and Pattiann Rogers, represent nature and environmental issues. I consider how each poet is positioned in relation to deep ecology and, as women writing nature, to ecofeminist theory. While the theory of deep ecology operates on the premise of interconnection between nature and a generic or unmarked subject, I situate the poets as historical subjects, examining how cultural differences inflect their readings of nature. I argue that cultural orientations, such as each poet's specific upbringing, gender, ethnicity, religion, and geographic region, do not distance the poets from the natural world or block their view of nature, but rather that these writers show how human culture itself is embedded in nature.;A varying combination of cultural foci, most relevant to each poet in turn, serves as the framework for each chapter of the project. Chapter 1 focuses on Levertov's pioneering ecological poetry, which is inflected by her political activism, gender, and cross-cultural religious themes. She addresses environmental poisoning resulting from nuclear missile testing and other toxic practices. Chapter 2 examines Oliver's more ecologically oblique poetry, as influenced by her pastoral upbringing, spirituality, and sense of the female body and place. Oliver focuses on biological and botanical processes, particularizing also what is problematic in humankind's relationship with nonhuman nature. Chapter 3 centers on Clifton's portrayals of an urban and black nature. She historicizes nature within the context of African American slavery and gender relations, depicting nature as subjugated or enslaved to humankind. Chapter 4 examines Hogan's portrayals of the oppression of nature against the backdrop of Chickasaw traditional beliefs, the plight of Native Americans, and Native American healing arts. An environmental activist herself, she emphasizes the spiritual significance of all life-forms, writing poetry as a way to give nonhuman nature a speaking voice. Chapter 5 explores Rogers' interest in science, gendered embodiment, and an unorthodox Christian spirituality. Bridging the gap between poetry and science, she forwards a cosmological ecology that incorporates recent scientific thought.