Enaiê Mairê Azambuja

The paper presents work in progress developing apophatic ecopoetics as a framework for understanding how mystical traditions, including Christian negative theology, Zen, and Taoism, inform modernist and contemporary American poetry’s engagement with ecological crises through absence, negation, and unknowing. While ecocriticism often foregrounds presence and materiality, emerging frameworks in negative ecology (Sean McGrath), dark ecology (Timothy Morton), yin ecocriticism (Chia-ju Chang), apophatic materialism (Catherine Keller), and negative ecopoetics (Kate Rigby) emphasise silence, relationality, and attentiveness beyond language. Focusing on modernist and contemporary American poets, the paper examines how strategies of omission, ellipsis, fragmentation, minimalism, and linguistic restraint cultivate attention to ecological indeterminacy and the more-than-human. In the Anthropocene, an era overdetermined by human systems of value and meaning, these strategies act as ethical counter-gestures, attuning readers to ecological realities beyond anthropocentric frameworks. Apophatic techniques cultivate relational awareness through what withdraws or resists linguistic capture, resonating with mystical traditions such as Eckhart’s conception of God as a “desert” beyond naming, Cusa’s docta ignorantia (“learned ignorance”), and Zen insights like Huineng’s “not-knowing” and Dōgen’s unity of mind and nature, offering a spiritual and epistemological lineage for ecological attention. The paper outlines the conceptual foundations of the larger project, situating apophatic ecopoetics within historical, aesthetic, and ecological contexts. By foregrounding absence and negation as active modes of perception shaped by mystical traditions, it argues that poetry provides tools to engage ecological crises, revealing dimensions of the more-than-human often overlooked by conventional representation.