Wildness and Windsor: Di Brandt’s “Zone: <le Détroit>,” Environmental Praxis, and Urban Nature

Abstract

Should we agree the purple loosestrife along the river is beautiful and benign, intending only to shine? Choking out even the bulrushes, pharaoh of weeds. – Di Brandt, “Horizon on Fire” (11–14) Purple Loosestrife is a wetland plant, native to Europe and Asia, but in North America it is considered one of the most problematic invasive species. It grows quickly, forming a thick stand in disturbed areas, choking out native species with a dense mat of roots while providing little food value for native species. Furthermore, a single plant can produce over one million seeds each year, making it difficult to root out. Yet the plant also produces numerous purple flowers along its stems, so that Di Brandt proclaims the plant beautiful and benign even as it chokes out native bulrushes. The lines above epitomize the way Brandt sees a vitality in the natural world that consistently interrupts certain human activities while calling viewers to reflect on their beauty and ongoing resistance to human control. The poem is set in an apocalyptic urban future marked by smokestacks, concrete, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane or DDT, and dead fish, yet nature finds ways to re-assert itself in weeds, grasshoppers, and birds. The poem’s speaker wants to celebrate this resistance yet also mourns the inherent destruction of industrial capitalism which has created urban wastelands.