Entangling the World: The Connective Poetics of Juliana Spahr’s “If You Were a Bluebird”
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Bachelor Thesis
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Abstract
Juliana Spahr’s “If You Were a Bluebird” relates the intricate entanglement of several distinct ecosystems with the world. The poem offers new poetic forms that help make us aware of the precarious situation into which the Anthropocene epoch has forced us. The interconnectivity and relationality that “If You Were a Bluebird” consequently proposes help in reconceptualising the distorted relationship between nature and culture. The notions of the material-semiotic node, the creaturely and gathering are used to analyse the different connections that occur throughout the poem. These concepts ultimately show how the poem entangles the human and the nonhuman and places them within a shared existence in which we are always becoming with each other.
Keywords
poetry; Juliana Spahr; If You Were a Bluebird; ecocriticism; animal studies; vulnerability; creaturely; material-semiotic node; gathering; entanglement; Anthropocene; Donna Haraway; Bruno Latour; nonhuman;