It seems only natural that Jim McKusick
would find a way to bring together his passion for nature with his love
of literature. His achievement can be found in two new books exploring
the emerging field of "ecological literary criticism."
"I've been fascinated by the outdoors and the environment since I was a
kid," explains McKusick, chair of UMBC's English department. "It's deep
in my blood." As a teenager, he hiked 1,000 miles of the northeast
section of the Appalachian Trail, and in subsequent summers, he trekked
hundreds of miles of the Sierra Nevada and Pacific Crest trails, as well
as led wilderness canoe trips. ("I have a special fondness for swamps,"
he admits.) While a student at Dartmouth College, he began mountain
climbing, conquering peaks in the Himalayas and Peru.
At the same time, he found his professional voice in literature, most
specifically English poetry of the Romantic period, in which he
discovered echoes of his own fascination with the natural world and
sources that deeply influenced American writers such as Emerson,
Thoreau, and John Muir, laying the foundation for the modern
environmental movement.
In his newly published anthology Literature and Nature: Four
Centuries of Nature Writing, co-edited with Bridget Keegan, McKusick
presents a banquet of literary selections--in all genres (poetry, plays,
novels, and essays), written by men and women of all races, social
classes, and nationalities. His second publication, Green Writing:
Romanticism and Ecology, a deeper, more focused treatise on the
influence of the English Romantics, took McKusick out into the field, to
his great delight. "If you're going to understand a writer, I think you
have to be deeply attuned to their geographical place," he says. |
