Date of Award

Spring 5-3-2024

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Open-Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

Advisor

Benjamin Friedlander

Second Committee Member

Jennifer Moxley

Third Committee Member

Sarah Harlan-Haughey

Abstract

What happens to our readings of poems if we acknowledge that they, like all we make, is made-with the more-than-human? This thesis seeks to articulate reciproesis, a term I borrow from Abenaki and French poet, writer, and teacher Cheryl Savageau, who describes reciproesis as “our doing in response to listening. Reciproesis arises from the understanding that all making, all doing, is done in reciprocity with the land,” as useful for reading poetry[1]. In extension of Savageau’s term, I seek to understand what it means to (re)animate the natural world through the artifact of the made-with poem, and do so by positioning the more-than-human as a co-composer of poetry written by 20th/21st century poets who look with attention and intention toward place. How might a poem be an artifact of a visit—a conversation—with a more than human place, of which the place helps to compose the poem itself? In what ways does consciously animating natural places help us to re-understand poetry, and look with care toward our natural world?

After articulating what reciproesis is and how it might work in a poetic context, I explore the poetry and poetics of poets A.R. Ammons, Brenda Hillman, Eleni Sikelianos, and Joy Harjo to map what I’ll call a “web” of reciproetics, in which I identify the myriad but not exhaustive ways in which poets might make with the more-than-human. I find that both the context under which a poem is produced and the construction of the poem itself alters the poet and place’s articulated relationship through the poem, which therefore may change the way the poem might be read as “made-with.” By relating the reciproetics of each of these poets to one another, I seek to identify some possibilities of making-with, and suggest that this web is continually woven: we may continue to map, through relation, the reciproetics of poets beyond the scope of this project. I hope that this piece sparks a significant turn toward an intention and awareness of the presence of the more-than-human in our often all-too-human lives, as they are intrinsic to what we make. Then, through this attention and intention, we might truly care for our companions and co-composers who live and make with us.

[1] Russo, Linda, and Marthe Reed, editors. Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing within the Anthropocene. Wesleyan University Press, 2018. Pp. 58.

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