Gesturing toward the common and the desperation: Climate geopoetics’ potential

Abstract

This commentary responds to Magrane’s accomplished article on climate geopoetics. I first ask whether Magrane’s reading could go wider to include some prominent poets who have addressed climate and lyric poetry in recent decades. I then suggest a connection between climate geopoetics and lyric philosophy, and posit the ability of poetry, through lyric’s ability to forfeit the individual self and to gesture toward something common, a universal emotion or state. Finally, I suggest that Magrane unleash his words so that they might match the desperate times in which humans find themselves. This response then ends with a climate geopoetics poem of my own.