Ecological Rhapsodies: An Earth-centric Reading of Richard M. Grove and John B. Lee’s Two Thousand Seventeen: Sesquicentennial Poems

By : Basudhara Roy

Page No: 23-28

Abstract:
Two Thousand Seventeen: Sesquicentennial Poems (2018) is a collection of forty-nine exquisite poems - twenty-nine by Richard M. Grove and twenty by John B. Lee, brought together to celebrate the sesquicentennial anniversary of Canada’s birth in the year 2017. Diverse in their themes, style and depth, the brilliant welding together of these poems into a firm composite owes itself to an overarching topophilia. The present paper attempts to undertake a bio-centric reading of the book from the point of view of contemporary theories in Ecocriticism and seeks to establish these poems as being predominantly about place and the ways in which we root in and relate to it. It proposes that these poems can, in Timothy Morton’s words, be termed as ecological rhapsodies in which nature is both protagonist and witness and in whose rhythms, both sustenance and wisdom are to be discovered.
 

Author :
Basudhara Roy
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Karim City College, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand.
 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/POET.2023.36.01.4