RE-INHABITING THE ISLANDS - The University of North Carolina at ...

offer readers ways to perceive a living sea instead of a semantically barren interzone, and
thereby do a great service for the oceans and coastal inhabitants. Maritime regions have
been traditionally situated in the liminal and Other categories of literary narratives, to
these regions‘ extreme detriment. Country-sized patches of garbage swirl in the centers of
the North Pacific and Atlantic Gyres. Snyder and Walcott help readers remember,
perceive, and preserve maritime places in the Pacific and Atlantic. My comparison of
both poets attempts to arrive at the senses of self and place necessary for inhabiting island
and coastal regions on both sides of North America.
The critical basis for comparing senses of place in the poetry of two such
sociologically different authors derives from a motivation to uncover deep similarities
and significant contrasts. I chose Snyder and Walcott in order to straddle the continent
and arrive at a nuanced understanding of bioregional places in maritime contexts.
Working with the field biologist and conservationist Raymond Dasmann, activist Peter
Berg initiated the discussion of bioregionalism in Northern California during the mid-
1970s. 8 As a local movement for living within the ecological household of a place, its
members identify across watersheds and ocean currents. Among a host of literary
scholars, I follow Scott Russell Sanders especially in believing that place is a crucial tool
of analysis by which to unpack literary ecologies and understand how texts and their
natural environments interact. This hermeneutic strategy of looking for the environmental
ground of meaning is imperative because ―if our interior journeys are cut loose entirely‖
from our chosen places, ―then both we and the neighborhood will suffer‖ (Sanders 81).
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treat ocean resources outside of national jurisdictions as mankind‘s common heritage was
a major influence on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
8 See Berg‘s Reinhabiting a Separate Country: A Bioregional Anthology of Northern
California and Kirkpatrick Sale‘s Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision.