Aarando el aire: la ecología en la poesía y la música de Nicaragua, by Steven F. White

2/6/12

SLU Prof's Book Examines Eco-Awareness Spread Through Nicaraguan Song & Poetry

CANTON - Known as the Republic of Poets, Nicaragua has a rich biodiversity that is threatened by destructive human activity. A new book of essays by St. Lawrence University Lewis Professor of Spanish Steven White examines how poetry and song have raised ecological awareness in Nicaragua, and how this movement could become a model of more ethical behavior throughout the world.

Arando el aire: la ecología en la poesía y la música de Nicaragua (Plowing the Air: Ecology in the Poetry and Music of Nicaragua) is a book of essays in Spanish, with an ecocritical focus on the work of Nicaraguan poets and singer-songwriters, such as Rubén Darío, Ernesto Cardenal, Carlos Mejía Godoy and many others.

The title of the book comes from a well-known folk song by Salvador Cardenal (1960-2010), whose work as an eco-activist to protect Nicaragua's Bosawás Biosphere Reserve has inspired an entire new generation.

White was selected for a Fulbright Senior Specialists project in 2007, to pursue a project on ecology and literature at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua in Managua and León. In 2008, he delivered the Frank P. Piskor Faculty Lecture on campus, on the topic "Trees and Rivers: Poetry and Ecology in Latin America."

"I regularly incorporate ecocriticism as a theoretical framework in my classes," White says, "as a way of teaching contemporary Latin American literature as well as research and writing skills in the Spanish language. Students seem very receptive to this interdisciplinary approach, since many language students have double majors in Spanish and biology or environmental studies and some plan to study for a semester in Costa Rica."

White is the author of the 2004 book El mundo más que humano en la poesía de Pablo Antonio Cuadao: un estudio ecocrítico (The More-Than-Human-World in the Poetry of Pablo Antonio Cuadra: An Ecocritical Study), presenting Cuadra's poetry from the perspective of ecocriticism. He also edited and translated Poets of Nicaragua and Birth of the Sun: Selected Poems of Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1935-1985).

A graduate of Williams College with a master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Oregon, White joined the St. Lawrence faculty in 1987. He is the author of several books of poetry and has published multimedia pieces combining spoken word, music with poems and translations. In addition, White has edited and translated several volumes of poetry by authors including Rubén Darío and Federico García Lorca.

More information about Steven White