ORCID
- Bloomfield, Mandy: 0000-0003-1035-9669
Abstract
This article examines American poet Susan Howe’s engagement with landscape and place across the trajectory of her career, centrally examining three key poems: Secret History of the Dividing Line (1978), Thorow (1987) and Souls of the Labadie Tract (2007). In so doing, it demonstrates this work’s pertinence for discussions of environmental aesthetics. Starting from the premise that Howe’s poetic engagement with entangled historical and environmental questions is as much formal as it is thematic, I focus on two of her prominent techniques: the “palimtextual” excavation of source materials and the spatial use of the page. I argue that this poetry’s entangled materialities play out shifting tensions and dialogues between a Romantic quest for a reconnection with “nature” and a constructionist awareness of the forms of mediation that shape the poetics of place.
DOI
10.1353/cli.2014.0039
Publication Date
2014-12-01
Publication Title
Contemporary Literature
Volume
55
Issue
4
ISSN
0010-7484
Organisational Unit
School of Society and Culture
First Page
665
Last Page
700
Recommended Citation
Bloomfield, M. (2014) 'Palimtextual Tracts: Susan Howe’s Rearticulation of Place', Contemporary Literature, 55(4), pp. 665-700. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1353/cli.2014.0039
