Axon: Creative Explorations

In the post-enlightenment era, the division between poetry and ‘truth’ has largely been framed in terms of scientistic versions of truth. In the modern era, this has manifested itself in a number of ways: in the adoption of ‘experimental’ as a metaphorical term for innovative poetic practices, and in the positivist framework for the notion of ‘progression’ in the arts generally. In this paper I seek to establish a frame for speculative poetry that is invested in myth conceived of as a resource of language. Following Ronald Hutton’s The Triumph of the Moon, I trace the development of James Lovelock’s ‘Gaia hypothesis’ as having its roots in eighteenth century mythopoeic practice, and also the foundations of scientism in the myth of atomism. I argue more broadly for the importance of poetry as a form of speculation predicated on myth, and that this aspect of poetry can be of vital importance in facing large-scale challenges such as global warming.

Keywords: myth; poetry; atomism; Mary Midgley; Northrop Frye; Ronald Hutton; Gaia; James Lovelock; Claude Lévi-Strauss; Jean-Luc Nancy; Lucretius; Earth Goddess; Jindyworobak

Following from Karl Popper's notion of 'subjectless' knowledge, this article
argues that poetry, like the other arts and sciences can be construed as a
distinct 'world'. This world is constituted by internal relations both in a
structural and an intertextual sense. Utilising Yury Lotman's
formalist-structuralist approach, the difference between an internal
relation and an external relation is made clear through a close reading of
John Kinsella's 'The Silo', where the antipastoral elements are shown to be
in an external relation to it, whereas the gothic mode is in an internal
relation. A close reading of Philip Salom's Keepers trilogy further explores
the kind of knowledge possessed by poetry.