Animal joy: Poems

Abstract

<p>"Animal Joy" is a collection of poems which explores environmental and anthrozoological issues such as animal cognition, extinction, and weighs the problem of finding joy during our ecologically and politically tumultuous time. In several poems, the idea of childhood as a romantic ideal is explored. I see my collection, as with all my work up to this point, as part of the American Transcendentalist vision. This vision diffuses hierarchical binaries of human and nonhuman beings, civilization and the natural world, and the sacred and profane into an affirmation of life and the universe. Overall, I wanted to create a romantic vision that confronts, not escapes, the Anthropocene during the internet age. My poems believe in the redeeming power of the infant’s faith, the power of the natural world to heal, and universal brotherhood of all life, and all objects in the universe. My poems stand against negation, cynicism and despair. I want to make joy relevant to the 21st century.</p>