Expanding the Walk

Abstract

The poetic walk, the process at which the action of walking is connected to the poetic process of creating, experiencing, and explicating a poem, becomes more than just a place of metaphorical contact between the poet and the environment. A.R. Ammons asks us to consider how poems and walks are similar, but the colonial trappings of separating the human from the living environment haunts the understanding of how poetry serves as another connecting point of embodiment with the environment. Decolonizing the walk begins with consulting how indigenous poetics center on relationality over hierarchy. Poets such as Natalie Diaz, Tommy Pico, Simon Ortiz, and Carter Revard highlight and interrogate connections to the environment and complicate the ideas of the human and the environment. The erosion of assimilation begins with the connections to place. A walk serves as a point of connection beyond the agency of the human.