Man-Nature Physical Connection in the Poetry of Maggie O’ Sullivan and Gary Snyder: A Material-Ecocriticism Reading

Mohamed  Abdel-Daem

doi:10.54172/v1j8tf93

Authors

Mohamed Kamel Abdel-Daem Department of English, Port Said University, Egypt Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54172/v1j8tf93

Keywords:

physical connection, Snyder, O’Sullivan, material ecocriticism, storied matter, primitiveness, earth’s language

Abstract

This paper seeks to prove the effectiveness and convenience of material ecocriticism to look at the environmentalist work of both the green Anglo-Irish poet, Maggie O’ Sullivan and the nomadist American poet, Gary Snyder. It attempts to spotlight the importance of corporeal, rather than affective, interaction between people and the earth: the loss or lack of that substantial man-nature coexistence of premodernity and preindustialism might have led to the human negligence and belittling of the planet, and hence the ecological predicament. Snyder’s call to return back to primitive lifestyles and O’Sullivan’s unfamiliar out-of-lexicon diction – that might represent the language of the earth’s elements –hint at the inevitability of human-ecology bodily contact and field work in order to be able to comprehend the ‘storied’ history related by the planet, and thus deal with environmentalist issues more positively. Would we be able to perceive the earth’s plight when we are “shod”, to quote G.M. Hopkins’ term in “God’s Grandeur”?

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