How and why do people "frame" animals so pervasively, and what are the ramifications of this habit? For animals, being put into a cultural frame (a film, a website, a pornographic tableau, an advertisement, a cave drawing, a zoo) means being taken out of their natural contexts, leaving them somehow displaced and decontextualized. Human vision of the animal equates to power over the animal. We envision ourselves as monarchs of all we survey, but our dismal record of polluting and destroying vast swaths of nature shows that we are indeed not masters of the ecosphere. A more ethically accurate stance in our relationship to animals should thus challenge the omnipotence of our visual access to them.

This book offers a new paradigm for reading and appreciating animals in literature and addresses how human culture views animals in poetry. Part one sets up a theoretical overview and posits some aesthetic and ethical ideals for transposing animals into art, while part two presents a more focused practical application of these ideals in one strain of animal poetry (as seen in the works of Marianne Moore, José Emilio Pacheco, Gary Snyder, Pattiann Rogers, and others).

How and why do people "frame" animals so pervasively, and what are the ramifications of this habit? For animals, being put into a cultural frame (a film, a website, a pornographic tableau, an advertisement, a cave drawing, a zoo) means being taken out of their natural contexts, leaving them somehow displaced and decontextualized. Human vision of the animal equates to power over the animal. We envision ourselves as monarchs of all we survey, but our dismal record of polluting and destroying vast swaths of nature shows that we are indeed not masters of the ecosphere. A more ethically accurate stance in our relationship to animals should thus challenge the omnipotence of our visual access to them.

This book offers a new paradigm for reading and appreciating animals in literature and addresses how human culture views animals in poetry. Part one sets up a theoretical overview and posits some aesthetic and ethical ideals for transposing animals into art, while part two presents a more focused practical application of these ideals in one strain of animal poetry (as seen in the works of Marianne Moore, Jose Emilio Pacheco, Gary Snyder, Pattiann Rogers and others). The poetry analyzed in the book is respectfully and non-invasively insightful into animals; it is tinged with a distancing, and a kind of spiritual awe, regarding their existence.