Relating Monica Youn's 'Against Imagism' to ecoconcepts
Exploring the living book and reading about the concept of phototaxis is what inspired my train of thought to depart from the watery worlds I began at and detour onto the tracks and trails of the insect world.
Monica Youn’s short poem Against Imagism reminds us of the increasing light pollution that draws fireflies to their death (Dubino, 2013). Phototaxis evolved in animals as a means of regulating light exposure and finding food. Due to the advancement of human technology, phototaxis now is a cause of death amongst many insects. In a clear indictment of technology, the firefly in Youn’s poem is a tragic victim of its phototaxis leading it to death on a bug zapper.
There is a hybridity of this poem to be able to represent scientific concepts such as phototaxis, but also recall distantly the phenomenon of electricity in nature (as in electroreception). There is an obvious element of sevarbugfolenating in this poem too, as the poet describes for us the details of following a firefly’s body and movements into a bug zapper and thus to its death.
The trance experienced by Youn as she sevarbugfolgenates is represented by the enjambment of the second (and final) sentence, drawing the poem out in a continuous flow that reminds us of a flying insect’s path of flight. The poet’s trance is interrupted by the shock of the bug zapper (not to be confused with the shock of electricity given off by the bug zapper): SHAZAM!
- Steph Philipov, z3417828References
Dubino, J. (2013). Virginia Woolf's Dance-Drama: Staging the Life and Death of the Moth. Virginia Woolf Miscellany, (84), 9.
Youn, M. (2012). Against Imagism. The New Yorker. Retrieved on 23 April 2021 from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/23/against-imagism