Your dazzling death

Abstract

[EMBARGOED UNTIL 05/01/2029] The critical introduction to this dissertation is an essay exploring the concept of an ecopoetics of reintimation. Examining the work of poets Vanessa Angelica Villarreal, Tommy Pico, and Natalie Diaz, I ask the question: what is the opposite of estrangement from the land? Using the work of interdisciplinary queer theorists Mel Y. Chen and Gloria Anzaldua, I develop the framework of an ecopoetics of reintimation as a way to investigate how poets from communities that have experienced histories of displacement, erasure, and colonial violence use different poetic techniques that attempt to reclaim a relationship of intimacy, familiarity, and embodied knowledge with the land, animals, plants, and the body. I also connect this to the current ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, who have been under constant horrific bombardment by the Israeli military with the full backing of U.S. dollars for more than six months to date. The cleative component of this dissertation is a look-length poetry collection about losing my partner to suicide in 2020. Elegizing my partner, I insist that the intimate, ongoing conversation with a beloved mysteriously continues after loss. In four poems titled "The Question of Surviving This," I explore what it means to continue living after traumatic loss.Includes bibliographical references