The Environmental Crisis in Désamère
As Notley writes in her preface to Désamère, it is a book set in a time of environmental crisis. This theme is inextricably linked with all that takes place in the book and is the driving force for Amère’s journey to becoming a saint and understanding the world.
This book is not written in the same way that traditional environmental books are, like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson for example. Notley is not revealing a particular issue such as carbon emissions or chemical pollution of water sources. Rather, she is, through Desnos, identifying the root cause of all of these issues: the culture that humans have created. Désamère is about how we have lost what it means to be a species, what it means to connect with animals and nature, through our own actions.
In the book, Notley creates her own image of what a destroyed environment will look like. It is a desert world with a ruined sky, yet filled with animals. There are diamonds and salt, some plants and some water. Notley grew up in the desert and it is a place that comes up in other works of hers.
Desnos says, ‘The future’s this desert
I’m dreaming
The future, there’s nothing in it but spirit
There are no animals
And then no people, it’s so beautiful
White and empty like dissolved bones of a carcass’
To Desnos, and eventually Amère, a world without humans is not something to sad in the way that people normally think of it. As Notley emphasizes in her interview, “all souls are the same size.” She believes everything has a soul. Humans don’t get to decide that. We are not truly above animals like in the hierarchy we have created. Yet, we let animals die and go extinct without the same concern we afford humans. We are desperate to save the planet only for our own preservation and continuation as a species. Desnos' description of the future world is haunting yet peaceful. Although all species have gone extinct, the world has become peaceful and calm. In a 2018 interview, Notley discusses her belief that while humans are entirely culpable for the destruction of the planet, it is presumptuous to think that what we are doing matters. This, she says, is a way to assuage our grief over the state of the planet.
Throughout the book, Notley addresses more than just the actions we typically think of harming the environment. While cars and consumerism are addressed, war is also an important contributing factor to the destruction of the environment. According to Desnos, “The effect of war on all wildlife is unimaginable.” For example, Americans killed the elephants that the Viet Cong used for transportation. An idea that Notley repeats throughout the book is that the only people benefitting from these wars and the environmental destruction are politicians. Desnos describes Nixon’s face becoming younger and younger as the wars continue. Aside from the destruction of the environment, Notley explains how these wars have damaged humanity. Animals don’t kill each other out of malice, in the same way that we do. Wars are just another example of how humans have separated ourselves from animals in a damaging way. In this quote, Desnos gives an example of the connection between war and environmental degradation.
France’s bloody reign in Vietnam,
Its one hundred years there become
A red tide of algae in the future
Multiplying on excess carbon dioxide
What’s the connection? It’s in the absurd
Ductility of human response
To phantom realities, colonial empires,
Communist and technological ones
But I, Desnos, have only ever
Responded to the empire of the spiritual
‘What I’m guilty of,’ Amère says,
‘Is being in a human culture –
But how can we have life without that?
Desnos, I want to be free like you’
This question: “But how can we have life without that?” is one of the central questions of the book. In my interview with Notley, she shared that it is important to remember that everything has a soul and that all souls are the same size. Just believing this and putting it into practice immediately removes one from human culture. As is repeated throughout Désamère and Close to me & Closer… (The Language of Heaven), human culture has been invented by humans and made us alien to animals and nature. The culture that we’ve created, of war, consumerism, cars, is not something that we need. We can remove ourselves from it.
A common thread throughout the beginning of Désamère is humanity’s transformation into cars. As stated in the interview, Notley believes that one of the most important things that we can do as humans to help the environment is give up cars. Today, cars make up 1/5 of all emissions produced in the United States. To Desnos and Notley, cars are something that we have convinced ourselves that we need in our invented human culture. I think that in Désamère, cars are an example of something humans have turned to to separate ourselves from animals. They help us believe we are better and more advanced and more deserving.
‘Brother,’ says Amère, ‘Why are you and I
Like this … soldier, widow,
Why aren’t we cars?’
‘Because you grieve like animals,’ Desnos says,
‘Behaving as your species would
If it hadn’t turned into cars
You’re still the animals’
Pills but never cars, destroy own
Body, but not the world’s
Are pills and cars really the same?
Creature’s breath, structure’s non-breath, small thing on ground’s non-breath, ground’s non-breath. What fills us? We’re exactly the same thing. Why am I person? Still don’t see the point. Small creature’s closer to god, less distracted, destructive. I don’t contain more of anything, I’m certain.
At this point in the book, Désamère has had her identity, her humanness, taken from her by the psychologist. At first, she’s afraid. Then she begins to remember why she is in the desert: to learn something transcendent. She just can’t remember what. But what is most important is actually that she cannot remember. It makes her realize how alike we are to animals. Once all of our inventions are stripped away, she can’t help but see the communality we have with animals. In reality, they have more of what is important than we do. This is what Notley proposes as our solution to the environmental crisis: find our communality and then incorporate that into how we live. The only question I have with this solution as a reader is, what do we do with the climate destruction we already have? How do we actually implement these ideas with everyone in the world? Or is this solution too mythological and spiritual for it to be possible?
The last lines of Désamère. To quote Notley in the preface to the book: “The last poems in Désamère hint at a unity of self beyond splitting into voices or into seer and seen. Désamère, who has been surveying her most essential self or soul, suddenly becomes it and looks out from the place she was previously looking at.” She has achieved the ultimate goal that Desnos tasked her with before she entered the desert. The poems leading up to this line are filled with descriptions of animals, humans, light, and nature. It is as if there is no longer time or existence for Désamère. This section of the book, entitled Desert Poems is the most abstract and is dissimilar from the Amère and Desnos section. The environmental crisis no longer seems to exist for Désamère. She has found her own way to exist, a way that removes her from such human concerns and problems. This section is also the most connected to Close to me & Closer… (The Language of Heaven) as it emphasizes the daughter’s realization of poetry being the human difference. The only thing that actually separates humans from animals. As the daughter says in her final line: “You can be heaven on earth…” Which I think Désamère has found by the end of her story.
I look out from my soul (never wanted more) finally look out
from my soul
Milky, dappling, pale warm sun … something that loves in coming
Near