Fragmentary Introspective Observations: Animals, Emotions and Location in John Kinsella's Poetry

Abstract

Contemporary criticism regards the term 'pathetic fallacy' as one indicating excessive sentiment. In the current geological epoch it is questionable if we can ethically ascribe human qualities to inanimate objects; the attribution is as problematic as ascribing emotional qualities to flora and fauna. Poets have long considered this pejorative inference arising from the act of placing a noun onto an object. As counterpoint, making ('poeisis') - conceived ecologically - harnesses the present participle within craftwork, to offer things as yet incomplete and always in relation. Sense and emotion become questions of expression, mood and tone that entail the world that includes the human as one part therein - arising on its own terms. John Kinsella's cartographic and posthuman turns in these two collections promote awareness of emergent ontologies and the limits to language in attending to a creaturely life that speaks of the subject (self) and world (object) as one: to extend the self into the world might suggest both an epistemological flaw and a fallacy of bi-directional harmony.