“Poethic” Particulars: Anne Waldman’s Poetics of Detail in Manatee/Humanity

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Published: Oct 18, 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/syn.20893
Keywords:
Anne Waldman American poetry detail Manatee/Humanity poethics Relation Édouard Glissant ecology Buddhism dissipative structures
Laurence Bécel
Le Mans University
Abstract

In Manatee/Humanity (2009), Anne Waldman investigates our world through a poetics of detail that records diversity in what Édouard Glissant calls the ‘totality- world,’ against the threat of ‘monolithic’ representations of the world that, inWaldman’s terms, are shaped by totalitarian discourses. The poet’s language engagesher own relationship with the world. As Waldman asks: “What is poetry’srelationship to the composite world, /in the relative world?” In Manatee/Humanity, Waldman deals with relativity through a Buddhist conception of time. Besides, her poetic quest echoes Édouard Glissant’s definition of a poetics of Relation and challenges the ability of poetic writing to account for a Glissantian relationship with the world. Waldman’s interrogation also entails a questioning of the relation betweenthe ‘particulars’ of the world and the world as structure. This essay argues that Waldman uses detail as an epistemological standpoint for herpoetics of interconnected particulars which is entwined with an ethical approach to our contingent world, and may be defined as a poetics of Relation.

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Author Biography
Laurence Bécel, Le Mans University

LaurenceBécel is Associate Professor of American literature at Le Mans University. Her research focuses on 20thand 21stc. North-American poetry. She has published articles on the poetics of testimony in the works of Anne Sexton and Anne Waldman. She has performed poems by Waldman with the author at poetry readings.

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