Plants in Contemporary Poetry

Book excerpt: This book studies representations of plants in contemporary American, English, and Australian poetry, addressing the relationship between poetic language and the subjectivity, agency, sentience, consciousness, and intelligence of vegetal life. It forwards an interdisciplinary model of 'botanical criticism' in examining the role of plants in contemporary poetic expression. Drawing from recent plant science and contributing to the new field of critical plant studies, Ryan redresses the lack of botanical emphasis in ecocriticism, ecopoetics, and the environmental humanities. This book will be of interest to the emerging areas of human-plant studies, critical plant studies, and cultural botany.