Nothing Shocking: Overcoming the Monotonous Sublime in Juliana Spahr’s Eco-Poetry

Abstract: Given the multi-scalar temporal and spatial extent of the climate crisis, perhaps contemporary representations of and responses to ecological disasters are losing the capacity to shock. Has the persistence and complexity of ecological crisis resulted in what Robert Lowell called the ‘monotonous sublime’— the sense that the spectacular or terrifying is now experienced as tedious? This article assesses these concerns by analysing a work of eco-poetry that engages with and disrupts this sense of monotony: Juliana Spahr’s That Winter the Wolf Came (2015), which counters the notion that environmental crises and climate disasters have become mundane.