The Ecologies of African American Poetry Collections

Abstract

In this paper, I take as my subject both anthologies of African American poetry and what is loosely called ecopoetry. I am interested in the governing gestures editors make when they compile anthologies. I make a case for why it matters for ecocritics to read African American poetics as participating in ecopoetics and to include their voices in ecopoetic anthologies; in turn, I also make a case for how African American poetry anthologies could present poems working in the ecopoetic vein, in order to augment their offerings. Both are complementing gestures that would allow us to move toward effecting changes in our interactions with the nonhuman natural world; and I argue that anthologies can play a more complete role in shaping these interactions.