Elegies for the Planet

Abstract: Twenty-first-century climate change poems mourn the dying and possible death of the planet. Among the questions explored in this essay, How can ecocriticism on the poetics of climate change help develop and revise the paradigms of poetic mourning in elegy scholarship? How can elegy scholarship help address ecocriticism's qualms about mourning and elegy? Are there ways of thinking about these poems as elegies for the planet that clarify their ethical purchase, elucidate their literary power, and embrace their necessity? And what are the implications of this body of poetry for conceptualizing our affective response to the climate crisis?