Form and Perception of Nature in Elizabeth Bishop’s “Questions of Travel”

Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry is acutely form-conscious and human perception informs its descriptions of nature; critics who study Bishop’s poetry refer to her use of poetic artifice and note in passing the ethics of restraint and impersonality in her poetry.However, Bishop’s poetry is rarely discussed in the sphere of ecocriticism; and the formal significance of human perception infused with the descriptions of nature in her poetry is conveniently overlooked. Likew ise, anthropogenic climate change isunderrepresented in traditional ecocriticismw hich insistson removing form—and w ith it, any trace of the human—from the text. This article proposes that a study of Bishop’s travel w riting and exploring the significance of concern for nature in conjunction withform-consciousness can contribute to a more profound understandingofboth human-nature relationshipand Bishop’s ecopoetic sensitivities. “Questions of Travel” is one of Bishop’s poems that directly grapples w ith the ethics of human presence in nature. T he article explicates thetextual and formal features of this poemto elucidate the function of form in its ecopoetic descriptions. T he article show show Bishop acceptsthe inevitability of human perception of nature and its literary corollary in ecopoetryas form-consciousness,and, thus, by implication, points to the importance of such poetry for a deeper understanding of the relationship between human beings and nature in the context of climate change.La poesía de Elizabeth Bishop es marcadamente consciente de la forma y la percepción humana informa sus descripciones de la naturaleza; los críticos que estudian la poesía de Bishop hacen referencia a su uso del artificio poético y mencionan de paso la ética de la contención y la impersonalidad en su poesía. Sin embargo, la poesía de Bishop raras veces se discute en la esfera de la ecocrítica, y el significado formal de la percepción humana que infunde las descripciones de la naturaleza en su poesía se ignora convenientemente. Del mismo modo, el cambio climático antropogénico raras veces se menciona en la ecocrítica tradicional, que insiste en eliminar la forma—y con ella, cualquier rastro de lo humano—del texto. Este artículo propone que un estudio de la escritura de viajes de Bishop y una exploración de la importancia de la preocupación por la naturaleza en conjunción con la conciencia de la forma puede contribuir a una comprensión más profunda tanto de la relación humanidad-naturaleza como de las sensibilidades ecopoéticas de Bishop. “Cuestiones del viaje” es uno de los poemas de Bishop que aborda directamente la ética de la presencia humana en la naturaleza. El artículo comenta los rasgos textuales y formales de este poema para elucidar la función de la forma en sus descripciones ecopoéticas. El trabajo muestra cómo Bishop acepta la inevitabilidad de la percepción humana de la naturaleza y su corolario literario en la ecopoesía manifestado en la conciencia de la forma, y así, por implicación, señala la importancia de dicha poesía para una comprensión más profunda de la relación entre los seres humanos y la naturaleza en el contexto del cambio climático

DIY Methods 2022 Conference Proceedings

As the past years have proven, the methods for conducting and distributing research that we’ve inherited from our disciplinary traditions can be remarkably brittle in the face of rapidly changing social and mobility norms. The ways we work and the ways we meet are questions newly opened for practical and theoretical inquiry; we both need to solve real problems in our daily lives and account for the constitutive effects of these solutions on the character of the knowledge we produce. Methods are not neutral tools, and nor are they fixed ones. As such, the work of inventing, repairing, and hacking methods is a necessary, if often underexplored, part of the wider research process. This conference aims to better interrogate and celebrate such experiments with method. Borrowing from the spirit and circuits of exchange in earlier DIY cultures, it takes the form of a zine ring distributed via postal mail. Participants will craft zines describing methodological experiments and/or how-to guides, which the conference organisers will subsequently mail out to all participants. Feedback on conference proceedings will also proceed through the mail, as well as via an optional Twitter hashtag. The conference itself is thus an experiment with different temporalities and medialities of research exchange. As a practical benefit, this format guarantees that the experience will be free of Zoom fatigue, timezone difficulties, travel expenses, and visa headaches. More generatively, it may also afford slower thinking, richer aesthetic possibilities, more diverse forms of circulation, and perhaps even some amount of delight. The conference format itself is part of the DIY experiment