Poiesis of the Nonhuman: Zoopoetic Aesthetics in Elizabeth Bishop’s and Salim Barakat’s Selected Poems
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31185/wjfh.Vol22.Iss2.1569Keywords:
zoopoetics, Elizabeth Bishop, Salim Barakat, comparative literature, bodily poiesis, animal agency, ecopoetics, anthropomorphism, attentivenessAbstract
The present study conducts a comparative analysis of selected poems by Elizabeth Bishop and Salim Barakat following the zoopoetic theorizing, which focuses on concepts of bodily poiesis and animal agency. It aims to identify distinct zoopoetic aesthetics. Bishop's poems show an aesthetic of material empathy, where an observational confrontation with a nonhuman prompts an ethical attitude and reaction in the human speaker. In contrast, Barakat's poems develop an aesthetic of mythic abstraction. His poems transcend the human observer who grants nonhumans a sovereign agency. Barakat's poems do not depict a history of struggle and survival but grant nonhumans a cosmic and sublime force that presents their consciousness as complete and sufficient. Essentially, the study concludes that while Bishop directly enacts the process of zoopoetics to demonstrate how the poet's material attentiveness to a nonhuman's being generates formal and moral breakthroughs, Barakat's poems embody a radical and philosophical approach of zoopoetics through imagining a non-human-centered world.
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