Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 6.01 Literature
Presentation #1 Title
Poets of the Appalachian North: Ecohistorical Renderings of Place in James Wright, Maggie Anderson, and Richard Hague
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Two-sentence Summary: My paper explores an ecohistorical sense of place in the poetry of Wright, Anderson, and Hague, three poets who have consciously grappled with their own understanding of and attachment to the Upper Ohio Valley and its culture within their poems. Abstract: Following James Wright as a voice of the northern Appalachian mountains, Ohio Valley poets Maggie Anderson and Richard Hague have produced a body of work that both exalts and critiques the cultural landscapes of the Upper Ohio Valley featured in their poetry. These landscapes are rendered not simply as aesthetic backdrops, nor as overly romanticized descriptions of the natural world. In my paper I consider these poets as expressing what I call an “ecohistorical” sense of place. Characteristics of the ecohistorical include the following: a historical or ancestral connection to a specific place, a recognition of the effects of the past and present on the natural environment, and a sense of rootedness informed by cultural, philosophical, communal, and spiritual connections to place. Such place dynamics are ever-present in the work of Hague and Anderson. “Place,” writes geographer Tim Cresswell, “is not just a thing in the world, but a way of understanding.” The ecohistorical poem results from the poet’s attempting to reach such and understanding, and in my paper I explore the ways in which the poet may respond to, identify with, or reject the landscapes with which they so closely identify. In this way, the poetry of place defies pejorative tags typically associated with regional writing such as idealized, romanticized, and nostalgic, and crosses into the realm of significant cultural commentary and critique. Hague and Anderson, then, stand as relevant figures of the Appalachian north by exemplifying this ecohistorical relationship with place through their work.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
William Scott Hanna is an Assistant Professor of English at West Liberty University where he teaches courses in writing, American Literature, and Appalachian Literature.
Poets of the Appalachian North: Ecohistorical Renderings of Place in James Wright, Maggie Anderson, and Richard Hague
Two-sentence Summary: My paper explores an ecohistorical sense of place in the poetry of Wright, Anderson, and Hague, three poets who have consciously grappled with their own understanding of and attachment to the Upper Ohio Valley and its culture within their poems. Abstract: Following James Wright as a voice of the northern Appalachian mountains, Ohio Valley poets Maggie Anderson and Richard Hague have produced a body of work that both exalts and critiques the cultural landscapes of the Upper Ohio Valley featured in their poetry. These landscapes are rendered not simply as aesthetic backdrops, nor as overly romanticized descriptions of the natural world. In my paper I consider these poets as expressing what I call an “ecohistorical” sense of place. Characteristics of the ecohistorical include the following: a historical or ancestral connection to a specific place, a recognition of the effects of the past and present on the natural environment, and a sense of rootedness informed by cultural, philosophical, communal, and spiritual connections to place. Such place dynamics are ever-present in the work of Hague and Anderson. “Place,” writes geographer Tim Cresswell, “is not just a thing in the world, but a way of understanding.” The ecohistorical poem results from the poet’s attempting to reach such and understanding, and in my paper I explore the ways in which the poet may respond to, identify with, or reject the landscapes with which they so closely identify. In this way, the poetry of place defies pejorative tags typically associated with regional writing such as idealized, romanticized, and nostalgic, and crosses into the realm of significant cultural commentary and critique. Hague and Anderson, then, stand as relevant figures of the Appalachian north by exemplifying this ecohistorical relationship with place through their work.
