literary echoes

Posted by Daniela Elza on Aug 26 2019

I was browsing through my bookshelf looking for a reference and came upon this editorial comment by the guest editor James Hatley in a special issue he edited for Environmental Philosophy called Species of Thought: In the Approach of a More-than-Human World (Volume V, Issue II, 2008). I am so grateful to his perceptive reading and for his insight. It is very rewarding when what I hope to do with poems and my form comes through in thoughtful reading.

“How greatly must human language be stretched, how creative must we become in both our perceiving and our speaking, if we are to witness responsibly the living world? Daniela Elza’s poem “In the Eye of the Crow” comes … as an exemplar of another sort of writing and subjectivity that might be more in line with that of Mowat with sustaining our responsibilities to the living world. Among the innovative features of her poem, Elza asks that its open verse structure be read in all possible directions on the page. In requesting this of her readers, she is moving them to a more radical responsibility in regard to the words she has offered on behalf of a crow. She is also breaking open any controlling narrative structure by which the hold upon another living entity’s world might be solidified.”
—James Hatley, Salisbury University

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