The Poem-Moment

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the uncanny temporalities of ecological grief and present the moment as a means of navigating them. I begin by noting that the word “moment” contains opposite meanings, pertaining to a temporal period that could be long or short, significant or insignificant. The moment is defined and delimited by those who encounter it, meaning that it defies the clock-time instated by colonial capitalism and is responsive to nonlinear understandings of temporality. Moments are not a series of distinct events that constitute world history but are instead, in the words of Édouard Glissant, tantalizing, terrifying “lightning flashes”. Without neglecting Glissant’s preference for the duration, I ask what such lightning might illuminate. I then suggest that this formulation of the moment might also elucidate poetry’s particular fluency in the practice of ecological grief, drawing on the example of “My Father’s Blue Plantation” by Olive Senior. I argue that poems can both contain and constitute moments of ecological grief, by virtue of their tolerance for significatory ambiguity, nonlinearity and abstraction, and their creation of space for collaborative grieving practices.