Subject to Change Liveblog 3

Tyler Babbie and Katelyn Kenderish (U Washington Seattle)


“Anthologizing the Landscape: Poetics of Plants in Places” 



Three works that elucidate the meanings within landscapes
Botkin, The Moon in the Nautilus Shell (2012) << Discordant Harmonies
Scolds readers for not having paid enough attention the first time
Beg that complex ecology becomes a world changing philosophy

idea of balance of nature << Greece
modern science as revealed truth
Apollonian/Dionysian nature

versus
Schama, Landscape and Memory
troublingly “historical” 
focus on America as if the new world inherits European history

recognition of where a place exposes its history
mountains etc as background
“landscapes are culture before they are nature”

Skinner on ANT
Latour: the social is not an invisible thing but an association
landscapes are not shadows of archetypes but rather are interactions between collectives
Praises Jonathan Skinner, Birds of Tifft

>> analysis of HD’s “Sea Garden”
Sea Garden’s relational aesthetic
<> ANT
plants in hostile environments
use of term “weed”

Jane Bennett: materialism of things that are on their way to becoming trash

“Sea Iris”: art object made of plants
it is about metaphor
“you are pained blue”
puts the sea iris in relation to human art 
“do your roots draw up color from the sand”

describing the plants without imposing too much of the human on them
Politics of Nature (Latour): “spokespeople” (scientists)
putting descriptions of entities into other descriptions
they do not humanize
>> “a natural place” for description

imagism: Sea Garden as the first imagist poetry >> Pound
if poems can be nonhuman actors then these poems translate into literary history

the poems approach the flowers as unfinalizable