Book in progress:
Channeling Nature: Plants, Animals, and Water in Italian Poetry.
“We are poets, we can make the words,” writes Muriel Rukeyser apropos the power of poetry to speak across bio-cultural barriers and produce change. At the core of my book project, titled Channeling Nature: Plants, Animals, and Water in Italian Poetry is the potential of poetry to shape an ecological imaginary and make room in the current discursive space for alternative modes of human/nonhuman interactions. The book participates in the ecological shift in critical theory described by Hubert Zapf, whereby poetry emerges as a vibrant world-making force of “imaginative participation” that provides opportunities for the enrichment of human/environmental relations.