“Arabesque Grotesque”: Toward a Theory of Dada Ecopoetics

22 Pages·2013·0.15 MB·English

I G J W
RENE AMMEL AND OHN RIGHTON
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Arabesque Grotesque : Toward
a Theory of Dada Ecopoetics
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—ElsavonFreytag-Loringhoven,“Arabesque”(124) b/
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Thank God, nature is going to die. Yes, the great Pan is ue
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—BrunoLatour,PoliticsofNature(25) ov
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Introduction:EcopoeticsandDada , 2
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Imagine this unique ecosystem in New York,1918: in acold-water
tenement on Fourteenth Street near the Hudson River, the Baroness
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874–1927), a German émigré Dada
poet, cultivated an intensely close relationship with animals—living
with several dogs and other assorted animals, refusing even to kill
rats, insisting instead on feeding them.1 The menagerie was housed
amongherartobjects,mostlyobjetstrouvéscollectedfromthestreetsof
NewYork,relocatedandrepurposedwithintheapartment.Theroom
was “crowded and reeking with the strange relics which she had
InterdisciplinaryStudiesinLiteratureandEnvironment(2013),pp.1–22
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2 I S L E
purloined over a period of years from the New York gutters,” as
the painter George Biddle recalls. “Old bits of ironware, automobile
tires, gilded vegetables, a dozen starved dogs, celluloid paintings,
ash cans, every conceivable horror, which to her tortured, yet
highly sensitized perception, became objects of formal beauty” (140).
A 1915 photograph of Baroness Elsa in her Greenwich Village studio
shows a birdcage with her canary hanging from the ceiling (rpt. in
Freytag-Loringhoven,BodySweats95,pl.2.10),justasDuchamphung
his snow shovel from the ceiling as a readymade. As an originary
“posthuman,”aconceptthathasemergedcontemporaneouswiththe
postmodernandphenomenologicalrevisionstosubjectivity,Baroness
Elsa blends organic, artful, and technological materials to produce a
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newaestheticandgenderedsensibility,onethatchallengesthemecha- o
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nomorphicmachineimagesdominatingNewYorkDada.Anticipating n
postmodern concerns, as Alex Goody writes, “Baroness Elsa's poetry load
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parodies the omnipotence of an American technological teleology, d fro
[and] considers how the consumer products of a modern America m
confuse and blur the integrity of the human form” (116). Thus, she http
translated her “house” into a functional Dada-ecosystem, and lived ://is
accordingtoecologicalprinciplesthatshewouldalsodeploythrough- le
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out her poetry. Radically reconfiguring and expanding the notions of xfo
“nature”poetryandthelyricalsubject,theBaroness'spoetrypresents rdjo
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aprescientanticipationofpostmodernecopoetics. rn
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In an opening statement for the 2001 inaugural issue of Ecopoetics, ls
JonathanSkinnerdescribesecopoeticsasacombinationof“eco,”“the .org
house we share with several million other species,” and poetics, “as by/
poiesisormaking”(7).Yetthemovetowardapoliticsandaestheticsof gu
e
s
ecopoetics is contested.2 For Jonathan Bate, in The Song of the Earth t o
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(2002), the oikos created by the poem is “the place of dwelling” (75), N
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andthequalitiesofpoeticlanguageareattunedecologicallysuchthat ve
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the “metre itself—a quiet but persistent music, a recurring cycle, a b
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heartbeat—is an answering to nature's own rhythms, an echoing of r 2
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thesongoftheearthitself”(76).Thepoemashouse-makinginthistra- , 2
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dition means re-accommodating the lyric “I” within its natural 13
habitat; poetry becomesan experiencewherein thesubject is rehabili-
tatedinthenaturalorderofthingsandbeings.Muchisatstakeinthe
developmentofan ecopoetics whichisreadwithpressingurgencyas
aresponsetothecontemporaryenvironmentalcrisis.3
At the same time, many ecocritics have abandoned a notion of
nature that hinges on a bifurcation of nature and culture (Bryson;
Costello; Latour; Morton; Wrighton). The posthuman in ecology has
beenthefocusofrecentstudiesincludingacollectionofessaysedited
by Stephanie LeMenager and her colleagues, Environmental Criticism
ArabesqueGrotesque 3
fortheTwenty-FirstCentury (2011),acollection dedicatedtoexploring,
as the editors explain, “history as an ecological as well as human
drama [to] uncover the complex relationships between nonhuman
systems, foundational ideas ofnature, and historical literary practice”
(1).AsLawrence Buellnotesinitsforeword,thecollection recognizes
“the always-already fusion of human with [the] nonhuman in nature-
culture (Bruno Latour's term)” (xiv). Surveying the evolution of post-
human thinking and its relevance to ecology, Louise Westling
identifies the cyborg posthumanism of N. Katharine Hayles and
Donna Haraway, and the posthumanism that dismantlesthe bounda-
ries between the human and animal proposed by Jacques Derrida,
Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari. Moreover,Westling readsthe phe-
nomenologyofMauriceMerleau-Pontyas“prepar[ing]thewayforan Do
ecological sense of human immersion” (34), while Jed Rasula, in his wn
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book This Compost: Ecopoetical Imperatives in American Poetry, explains: ad
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“The post-human—the posthumous Homo Sapien—passes from d fro
cosmos to chaos. But chaos has always been with us, intrinsic to m
cosmosifnottocosmology(wordsabouttheworld)”(43). http
TheBaroness'sDada,bornintheWorldWarI(WWI)era,produced ://is
aprescientlyposthumanaestheticthathasremainedremarkablyunex- le
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ploredinitsenvironmentalandecologicaldimensions.4Asarebelart xfo
that emerged in the wake of the mass destruction and ecological rdjo
carnagebroughtaboutbytheGreatWarof1914–18,Dadaanticipated urn
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the posthuman and postmodern reconceptualizing of the nature/ ls
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culture relationship by radically deromanticizing it in prose poetry, rg
lyric poetry, visual poetry, sound poetry, poetic manifestoes, and also by/
in poetic collages and assemblages (Ball; Richter). “Nature is neither gu
e
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beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad. It is fantastic, monstrous, t o
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and infinitely unrestrained,” as Zurich Dadaist Hugo Ball provoca- N
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tively asserts in a diary entry of November 1915. “Being in harmony ve
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with nature is the same as being in harmony with madness” (46). As b
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anantibourgeoisprotestagainstthemadnessoftheera,Dadapractice r 2
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engaged with nature in new hybrid forms, even though, as Jennifer , 2
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Mundy remarks, “Biomorphism is a term that sits uneasily in the 13
lexiconofmodernartmovements”(60).Farfromadvocatingromanti-
cized biophilic philosophies and aesthetics, Dadaists with an organic
focusinpoetryandart,suchasHans(Jean)Arp(1887–1966)(Iamborn
in nature: Poems), Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) (Merzbau, begun 1923),
and Sophie Taeuber (1889–1943) (Dada Head, sculpture, 1920;
NewYork,MoMA),forexample,championedanti-Romanticandanti-
pastoralconceptsofnaturethataskforaredefinitionofnatureitself.
Whereas Dada ecopoetics cannot be consigned to a single artist,
and explorations of organic forms are diverse among practitioners of
4 I S L E
Dada, none was as organically innovative or immersive as Elsa von
Freytag-Loringhoven, known simplyas “the Baroness,” whose legen-
daryself-displaysingloriousnudityandcostumesofherownmaking
contributed to her status as “the first American Dada” (Heap 46).
Writingagainstapastoralfigurationofpoeticnaturalism,theBaroness
centers on a base naturalism of the body, replete with all the unsa-
voury squelches and stenches ignored by a more pristine, idealized
nature. The Baroness's poetics shift the focus from a vision of nature
totallydefunctbyWWIontoanewvitalityofthebody,adesacralized
biosphereontowhichtheanxietiesofmodern (andpostmodern) sub-
jects could be mapped. Insofar as the experience of early-twentieth-
century modernity was one subtended by a greater reliance on the
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machines and technologies that structured urban life, the Baroness's o
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poetry reinvigorates the integration of nature and art in her radical n
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proclamations of the body as site and source of artistic production, ad
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informed by,responding to,andincorporatingthecongestion offilth, d fro
noise,detritus,andrefusethatcorrespondedtomodernurbanlifeand m
itsemergenttechnologiesinthefirstdecadesofthetwentiethcentury. http
Thusthe city (asthe seat of culture, often glossed asthe hermeneutic ://is
antithesis of nature) posed a radical affront to traditional concepts of le
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“nature”(representedbythepastoral)andthe“organic,”allofwhich xfo
permeate the Baroness's posthuman aesthetic. Just as the Baroness rdjo
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forcesthebodyintoherpoetics,sotoodoessheaccommodatethecon- rn
a
gested metropolis into her ecology. Through dismantling boundaries ls
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of the urban and rural, the animate and inanimate, the organic and rg
technological, the Baroness projects a new kind of “nature” into the by/
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cityspace. u
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WiththeBaroness's bodypoeticsasaguide,andwithreferenceto t o
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other Dadaists, this study advances a theory of Dada ecopoetics, N
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exploringanumberofcrucialthemessuchasaradicaldismantlingof ve
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nature/city boundaries; a desublimated trash aesthetic; a multisenso- b
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rialimmersiveperspective;anantipastoralaesthetic;andultimately,a r 2
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radicalecopoeticliminality.Whilemodernismanditsavant-gardeare , 2
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often excluded from studies of environmental or ecological concerns 3
(BotarandWünsche2),5associatedmostlywithmoderntechnologies,
urban life, and expanding media, this essay in contrast proposes that
the arc that culminates in postmodern ecopoetics extends backwards
to WWI-era Dada ecology. From a gendered perspective, the
Baroness's lyric oeuvre in Dada simultaneously challenges the domi-
nating machine focus of male Dadaists (exemplified in mechanomor-
phic machine drawings [Zabel]) and the vitalist Lebensphilosophien of
the fin de siècle,6 giving both a radical Dada twist of her own.
Opening a new field at the intersection of poetry, ecology, and Dada,
ArabesqueGrotesque 5
thisessayexploresapoeticsofporousboundarieswithinaprogressive
and transgressive aesthetic, ultimately contributing to reconfiguring
modernism'savant-gardeanditsrelationshiptotheenvironment.
“ ”
CityStir :UrbanEcologyandEmbodiedPoetics
IntheintroductiontotheircollectionofessaysTransculturalSpaces:
Challenges in Urbanity, Ecology, and the Environment in the New
Millennium (2010), Stefan L. Brandt and his colleagues assert that
“modern cities represent transcultural spaces in which the confronta-
tions of urbanity, ecology, and the environment emerge most visibly”
(x).Inthisbook,LawrenceBuellcallsforanunderstandingofthecity
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as both biological and cultural entity, drawing attention to the o
“dependence of urban thought and experience vis-à-vis ecological wn
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mattersuponembedded, oftenunacknowledged,tropesthatfunction ad
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not only as conduits for verbal expressions but also often constitute d fro
the conceptual structures in terms of which environmental strategies m
get thought through” (“Nature and City” 18). The tropes structuring http
t“hceityc/onnacteupretioans obfintahrey;mceittyroapsolhisoliinstieccomloagcircoa-lordgiascnoisumrs;eciintycluasdefrathge- ://isle
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mentary assemblage; as palimpsest; as network; and as apocalypse” xfo
(Brandt et al., “Introduction” xi). Hoping to construct a viable urban rdjo
ecology,thecollectionintroducestheconceptofa“transculturalinter- urn
zone” to describe the space between urbanity and “pristine nature” als
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(xii). rg
Likewise confronting the triad of “urbanity, ecology, and the envi- by/
ronment,”theBaroness'secopoeticsperformsaradicaldismantlingof gu
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the nature/city binary to create such a “transcultural interzone” in st o
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poetry. Just as the Baroness brings New York City's urban landscape N
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into her own ecosystem in the production of her lyrics, so she brings ve
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her unconventional body into the body-congested city, breaking the b
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boundariesofnatureandcityscapes.Thus,herpoem“Tryst”counters r 2
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the idealized Hudson River School tradition of Romantic landscape , 2
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1
painting,whichistraditionallypositionedoutsideof,orinopposition 3
to, the city, with a deromanticized vision of the Hudson as a pro-
foundly embodied, sluggish “Bloodshot— / Beetling— / Snorting— /
River—” (104–05).7 Far from an idyllic vacation resort, the Hudson
River is an “Icefanged,” “Glowering,” and “Hoary” beast, a new
hybrid creature whose “Groggy / . . . / Quest” is a “Tryst” with the
“Ocean”(104,105).Thepoem'soriginalmanuscriptregisterstheindel-
ible influence of place. The poem is written in her very distinct hand,
evocativeofGermanpoetStefanGeorge'saesthetictypology,onHotel
Hudson letterhead, underneath the address, “102 West 44th Street,
6 I S L E
New York, bet. Broadway and Sixth.” The caption “IN THE HEART
OFNEWYORK”stagesthemetropolisthroughthepoem'sparatext,a
rhetorical gesture that performs a dismantling of the nature/city
dualism (rpt. in Freytag-Loringhoven, Body Sweats 106, pl. 3.2). The
influenceofplace,readthroughtheBaroness'surbanecology,demon-
stratesaprofoundlyinterestingcomparisontoHansArp'sbiomorphic
sculptures,producednearlyadecadelater.TheBaroness'scityecology
andArp'sruralartistryevokealternate,butsympathetic,sensesofthe
“transcultural interzone” noted above. Whereas the Baroness's
New York City is recast as a radically new artistic ecology, Arp's
plaster (later cast in bronze) Sculpture to Be Lost in the Forest (1932,
1958; Tate), for instance, sublimates human artistic energies into a
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formthatvisually passesasnatural,ratherthan produced, dissolving o
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theboundarybetweennatureandcultureinadifferentdirection. n
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Also offering an embodied transcultural interzone, the Baroness's ad
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s1e9n2s0ocriitaylepcooelmogy“A.“pAppapllainllginHgeHaerat”rtp”udtissrounpdtsiscpolnavyehnetirovniablrpanarta,dmigumltis- d from
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of the city by articulating instead a space of bodily and perceptual ttp
immersion.Refusingtotakeadvantageoftheurbansublimeafforded ://is
by the new vertiginous skyscrapers, or the speed of the city, as the le
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moremasculine,machine-orientedDadadoes(Zabel24–25),thepoem xfo
relies instead on the ear as the site of perception and corporeal im- rdjo
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mersion,therebyalsoeschewingthedominanceoftheeyeasthemore rn
a
distancing and traditionally Romantic organ of aesthetic perception ls
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andsublimeencounters.Withthenightsoundsofthecitypenetrating rg
thespeaker'searandconsciousnessinthefirstline(“Citystir—windon by/
eardrum—”[103]),asthoughthroughatrumpet-likeamplifier,thepoem gu
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turns the entire cityscape into a vibrational field of “dancewind . . . / st o
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rustling— / tripping—swishing—frolicking” (103–04). Resonating N
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thesesounds,thespeaker'sbodyswingsinunisonwiththecitywhile ve
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transferringthatswingtothereader. b
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Ononelevel,theBaroness'spoeticecologycanbesaidtocreatean r 2
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“organicsublime,”definedbyPaulOutkaastheindividual'srecogni- , 2
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tionofthe“radicalequivalencebetweenself,bodyandenvironment” 13
(31). For Outka, “the ‘organic sublime’” occurs “when an individual
experience[s . . .] an often profoundly disconcerting awareness of the
radical material identity between his or her embodied self and the
natural world” (31).8 In “Appalling Heart,” this connectedness
between “the embodied self and the natural world” is strategically
projectedintothecity,aspacetraditionallydefinedasthequintessen-
tialmodernistspaceofalienation,inhabitedbyatomizedandisolated
city dwellers. By thoroughly dismantling theconventional binaries of
lyricalnaturepoetry,theBaronessproclaimsanewkindofnaturethat
ArabesqueGrotesque 7
ispurposefullylocatedattheheartofthecity.Shereclaimstheorganic
sublimeasacityphenomenon,establishinganexperientialconnection
betweensubjectandobject,yetwithoutidealizingthemetropolisasa
holisticmega-organism.
In “Appalling Heart,” the immersive experience involves the
body's senses. In the rhythmically vibrating space of sensorial inter-
connectedness,underscoredbytheinternalrhymingof“limbs—lips,”
“Appalling Heart” offers an almost Bateian evocation of nature's
rhythmsinlanguage,exceptforthefactthattheseembodiedrhythms
areexperiencedostensiblynotina“natural”landscapebutinthe“city
stir” of the metropolis. Adding to the sonic rhythms of the big city is
the Hudson, depicted as a “tinfoil river,” an image that calls up the
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early-twentieth-century sonic technologies, when phonograph cylin- o
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ders were wrapped in a tin foil on which the song was engraved. In n
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this simultaneously urban, organic, technological, and sonic space, ad
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b—oruidndinagr!i”esbaerceompoersotuhseapnodettircasdpiteiaoknearl'sbsinoarorireaslddiosuabplpee:a“ri.nTshpeac“emboloune d from
—ridessheawayfromminechest—/illuminedstrangely—/appalling http
sister!”(104).Inthisnightlydanceofconnectionanddisconnection,the ://is
poem also performs a linking of the subject with the city-body in and le
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through its compound words which, in turn, are conjoined through xfo
dashes:“Herbstained—flowerstained—/shellscented—seafaring—/... rdjo
/rides heart from chest— / lashing with beauty” (104). After her urn
exaltednightflight,thefinal,off-setline“Blessminefeet!”(104)liter- als
ally and figuratively grounds the speaker through her lower bodily .org
limbs. Her unpoetic “feet,” the lowly organs of locomotion, connect by/
herwiththe cityasan urban wanderer,aflâneusewhose perceptions gu
e
s
andidentityareshapedbyhernocturnalwalksthroughthemetropo- t o
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lis,hersensorialexperienceslinkingherwiththehorizontalandverti- N
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calplanesoftheurbanuniverse. ve
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Asapoiesis,“AppallingHeart”isaradicallyexperimentalspaceof b
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home-making which reconfigures dwelling within the writing of the r 2
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metropolisasatransculturalinterzone, orwhatStacyAlaimotermsa , 2
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zoneof“trans-corporality,inwhichthehumanisalwaysintermeshed 13
with the more-than-human world’” (2). The notion of “trans-
corporality” appropriately evokes a mobile space across various
bodies and sites. Like the Hudson River in “Tryst,” so the city in
“AppallingHeart”isembodied,itslively“limbs”describedas“swish-
ing,” vocabulary that also depicts the Baroness herself on her daily
promenades through the metropolis equipped with her Limbswish
sculpture(thetitleapunon“limbswish”and“limbswish”).Madeof
acurtaintasselandalargespiral,andwornattachedtoherbelt(Jones
198),theLimbswishbodysculpturefunctionsasa“technogenesis”(the
8 I S L E
idea that “humans have co-evolved with tools” [Hayles 265]), or as a
“prosthesis” (Goody 116) that extends beyond the body itself. The
Baroness'secopoeticstherebyprojectsherownbodyintothecity,and
conversely, the city into nature, practicing a radical breaking of the
boundariesofpoetry,art,andcitylife.Likewise,bywearingacostume
ofgildedvegetables,suchascarrotsorbeetroots,alongsidetechnolog-
ical objects, such as a blinking battery taillight on the bustle of her
dress(Gammel190–91,196),shedoesmorethanconjureupthecityas
a fragmentary assemblage: she gestures toward a corporeal integra-
tion of fragments and oppositions, fusing the technological with the
organicbody.
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“Earthrubbish”:LitterPoeticsasSustainableEcology ow
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The Baroness performs a similar assault on the nature/culture ad
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binarythrougharadicalecopoeticsofrecycling,asherworkisconsis- d fro
tently made from reclaimed rubbish, reabsorbing and recycling lin- m
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guistic, organic, animate, and technological litter and waste into her ttp
aYrategaenrdwproiteetsr:y.“WInehaerre pboosrtnmiondtoerna dapetortihtueso-ssitsreowfnruwbobrilsdh,,aPnadtritchiae ://isle
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nature that buffets us is never culture's opposite” (323). Likewise, xfo
Marcella Durand, in her article “The Ecology of Poetry,” combines rdjo
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environmentalist and poetic discourses to further conceptualize rn
“poetryasecosystemitself”(60),“recycling”andreinscribingcultural als
.o
detritus onto poetic and aesthetic discourse. Ecocritics advocate an rg
activism that also intersects with the larger social project of Dada, a by/
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movement Dadaist Hans Richter describes as a protest against the u
e
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era's ecological waste of life and mass destruction caused by the t o
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world's first industrial war (Richter 25, 65). The Baroness would sys- N
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tematically scour the streets, recycling the city's refuse for her poetry ve
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andvisualart,sothatherlitterpoeticsadvanceasustainableecology b
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that communicates an awareness of the value of wastewhen recycled r 2
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andrepurposed. , 2
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Asadevoteeofrubbish,theBaronesswasnotaloneinherpioneer- 3
ing art practice. Hanover Dadaist Kurt Schwitters also famously col-
lected refuse and waste as raw material for art as an expression of a
pioneering Dada ecology. Thus, Roger Cardinal describes Schwitters
as “an unrepentant scavenger, . . . who would return from his ex-
cursions with pockets and bags crammed with paper litter and other
varietiesofrefuse”(73).Respondingtothedevastation,bothenviron-
mental and psychological, of WWI, artists across Europe were com-
pelled to re-think human inter-relationship with the physical
environment. Schwitters found materials in the streets, in cafés, in
ArabesqueGrotesque 9
shops,incellars,whichhewouldusetocreatehiscollagesandsculp-
turalassemblages,includinghismonumentalantimonumentMerzbau
and abstract collages, or Merzbilder. His method was to strip each
found item of its Eigengift; by introducing fragments of rubbish, the
materialwasenteredintoanewaestheticunitwithout,however,subli-
matingthetrashintopureart(Cardinal82).9IntheMerzbildercollages,
a radical rubbish aesthetic brought fragments—political, quotidian,
and mass-produced—as part of the material texture of the canvas,
deploying practices similar to the Baroness's scavenging of found
wordsandmaterials.Likewise,SophieTaeubercreatedwoodenDada
heads,andtapestriesinwhichorganicshapesmorphfromthehuman
toanimal,whilstHansArpshiftedfromapurelysurrealisticinterpre-
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tation, renewing the spatial relation between aesthetic form in the o
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organic morphologyof his stone and plaster sculptures, simply titled n
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HumanConcretion(1935;NewYork,MoMA). ad
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posUefnudlesrcgaitrodloinggytthheatBraardoinceasllsy'scehcaollpeonegteicssthiseapuprriofiveodcartaitvioenbaulitsmpuorf- d from
h
modernism,usingtropesemployedbyfellowDadaiststoexposeinte- ttp
riors and challenge exteriors, and to problematize the boundaries of ://is
traditional aesthetic materials. Her work displays a strategic focus on le
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the lower bodily parts (especially digestive organs—the stomach, xfo
colon,andbowels)aspoeticsubjects equaltothemind,thetradition- rdjo
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ally elevated seat of consciousness, cognition, and rationality. This rn
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ecologyisevidentinGod(1917;rpt.inDickerman344,pl.313),acon- ls
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troversialcollaborativeassemblagesculptureconsistingofabathroom rg
plumbingtrapusedtoflushgreywater.BaronessElsafoundanddis- by/
g
mantledthedefunctdrainagetrapinadecrepithouseinPhiladelphia u
e
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and bestowed to it its sacrilegious title and conceptual meaning, t o
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whilst Philadelphia painter Morton Livingston Schamberg mounted N
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thesculptureupsidedownonamiterboxandvarnisheditwithsilver ve
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machine paint (Taylor 288–89). Art critic Michael Kimmelman has b
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read a spelling of the lower-case letters g-o-d in the curlicue twist of r 2
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theleadpipes,whichsuggeststhattheBaronesshasturnedthesculp- , 2
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tureintopoetictext.Visuallymimickingthedenseswirlsofbowelsin 3
aprofoundgestureofDadaembodiment,theartwork'sbrassandlead
machinery fuses modern technology with biology, spirituality, and
poetry.Assaultingboundariesofacceptability,thetechnologicalwaste
product turned God is metallic and sleek yet grotesque, confronting
the viewer with the “shock” of Dada, what Walter Benjamin has
described as Dada's “ballistic” effect that “touches” (304) viewers'
emotions in ways that resonate in the postreading experience often
longaftertheoriginalartencounter.
10 I S L E
InconsideringtheBaroness'slitterpoetics,wearealsoremindedof
Dadaist Hans Richter's argument in Dada Art and Anti-Art that in
order“tocurethemadnessoftheage”(31)anewkindofpoetrywas
required, one that “springs directly from the poet's bowels or other
organs, which have stored up reserves of usable material” (30). The
basernaturalismofthebody,frowneduponbytraditionallyricpoetry,
was integral to the Dada vision. Thus, the Baroness takes pleasure in
spoofingthewesterndominanceoftheCartesianmind–bodysplit.“If
Icanwrite—talk—aboutdinner—pleasureofmypalate—asartist,”as
she asserts in her prose poem “The Modest Woman” (first published
in The Little Review in 1920), “[I] can afford also to mention myecsta-
siesintoiletroom!”(286).Shequeriesfurther:“WhyshouldI—proud
engineer—beashamedofmymachinery—partofit?”(286).Likewise, Do
in her poem “Lofty Logic,” she outrageously instructs her reader to wn
develop “Affection toward thine excrements” (169) in an effort to load
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become“acquainted/Withthineself”(169),lampooningtheCartesian d fro
cogito ergo sum. Recycling entropic energies, these poetic ecologies m
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gesture toward the Baroness's conception of a trash aesthetic that ttp
firmlyanticipatespostmodernecopoeticsinwhich“anoldopposition ://is
betweennatureandculturehasbeendisplaced...byapreoccupation le
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with trash,” as Yeager explains in reference to the postmodern art xfo
scene(323). rdjo
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Withintheecologyofrecyclingandsustainability,languageitselfis rn
a
a cultural litter to be recycled and renewed, while culture as a rich ls
.o
compost for poetry is subject to the ecological laws of decomposition rg
and recomposition. In Sustainable Poetry: Four American Ecopoets by/
(1999), Leonard Scigaj argues that “[f]or ecopoets language is an gu
e
s
instrumentthatthepoetcontinuallyrefurbishestoarticulatehisorigi- t o
n
naryexperienceinnature”(29).Thus,ecopoetryrefersus“inanepiph- N
o
anic moment to our interdependency and relatedness to the richer ve
m
planet whose operations created and sustains us” (42). The Baroness b
e
presents such poetics of sustainability with a distinct Dada twist that r 2
6
alertsusateveryturnofthecriticallimitsofanthropocentrism.Inthe , 2
0
Baroness'spoem“Fix,”forexample,thespeaker'sselfextendsintothe 13
universeinaseeminglyWhitmanesquegesture,conjuringupaworld
inwhicheachatom,andeachself,isintegratedwithinalargerwhole,
exemplifiedbythelanguageofthecosmos:“Singlecosmicmiracle—/
Unreasonable sensuous omnisciences / Balancing universe. . . . /
Manifestwithin/Myself————”(“Fix”156,157).Yetfarfrompro-
claiming a pantheistic transcendence of an ever expansive lyrical “I,”
sucha“cosmicmiracle”isundercutbythepoem'sironicpolyvocality,
towhich the reader is alerted even by the poem's pointed title: “Fix.”
Loopingbacktothetitle,thepoemendswithsatiricprofanityandan