AML 4170 (Spring 2025)

Studies in American Literary Forms – Ecopoetry & Ecopoetics

Brassica rapa in the Field & Fork Farm & Gardens, University of Florida (Fall 2024).

An introduction to and eclectic survey of modern poetry addressing human relations with the more than human world in an age of planetary transformation.

We’ll read mostly poetry by American writers of the 20th and early 21st centuries, though we’ll turn further back in time for a few important historical precursors. Most of the assigned readings will be from Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street’s monumental, doorstop of an anthology, The Ecopoetry Anthology (rev. ed., 2020). Individual graded course requirements include three short critical readings of poems chosen by the student from among those discussed in class.

The principal collaborative effort of the course is a semester-long project inspired by US Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s 2024 “Poetry in Parks” initiative (https://www.nps.gov/subjects/literature/poetryinparks.htm ), which sited poems on signage in seven US National Parks. In collaboration with the staff of UF’s Field and Fork Farm (https://fieldandfork.ufl.edu ) student teams will select appropriate poems from Fisher-Wirth and Street to be sited on sitage in and around the Field and Fork Farm. Our “poetry in the garden” will be revealed to the public in a Farm open house event near the end of the semester.

Extra-credit service learning activities in the course include opportunities to take part in supervised volunteer tree plantings in and around the city of Gainesville.