The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature by Leslie Wylie

Reviewed by: The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature by Leslie Wylie Mariangela Ugarelli Risi Wylie, Leslie. The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature. U of Pittsburgh P, 2020. 279 pp. As the critical imagination has become once again preoccupied with ecology, botany, and the role of plants as living entities, the questions posed by Leslie Wylie in her 2020 book The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature, have become paramount: Where is the plant positioned within the corpus of Latin American literature, and what can we learn from this particular approach? An analysis of the poetics of plants in Latin American literature, where they have played a key role, from the Crónicas de Indias to the telluric novel and vanguard poetry, seems not only pressing but almost overdue. Wylie's book addresses the issue convincingly by providing a fresh look on texts of extensive critical tradition while simultaneously de-centering discourse towards plants, a phytocentric approach. [End Page 391] Wylie's book examines four distinct areas: eighteenth and nineteenth century descriptive poems of novel lands to the Western or westernized reader, the nineteenth century's novela de la tierra (telluric novel), the narrative of the Latin American Boom and vanguard poetry, all milestones of Latin American literary history. Chapter one considers plants in eighteenth and nineteenth century poetry as represented by Rafael Landívar's Rusticatio Mexicana and Andrés Bello's Silva a la Agricultura de la zona tórrida, dedicated to the Venezuelan llanos. In this chapter, Wylie studies the multi-faceted tensions between preservation of ecosystems, local agriculture and the possibility of large-scale agricultural projects in the 'fecunda zona' that Latin America is perceived to be ("¡Salve fecunda zona!" is the first line of Bello's poem, used by Wylie as the title for this section). Both poems present country-specific but similar case studies: notwithstanding their beauty and magnificence, the native plants provide no immediate monetary gain; the plantations do, but at the cost of weakening or entirely destroying the ecosystems in which they exist. The tense relation between the native plants and the space they physically occupy is further made complex by the beatus ille that often accompanies the tropes presented. The exaltation of the laborer, taken, as Wylie points out, directly from Virgil, is a trope that would fit harmoniously within the locus amoenus if the economic issues that ownership of the land pose were not present. Concerning native plants, Wylie points out the importance of the Ceiba tree within Mexican Pre-Columbian tradition and how this reverence might have percolated not only Landívar's discourse, who depicts the cutting down of a ceiba tree as a traumatic event, but the overall Criollo culture of the Mexican elites. This is proven in the third chapter on Carpentier, who wrote several decades later. The economic and cultural importance of the Ceiba tree, as is stated by Wylie, are paramount within the Mexican-specific Poetics of Plants and are also representative of the presence of indigenous ideas and sensibilities in the western canon through criollo authors. Chapter two of the book deals with Doris Sommer's novela de la tierra (telluric novel) represented by two national classics: Getrudis Gómez de Avellaneda's Sab (Cuba) and Jorge Isaac's María (Colombia). In both cases, Wylie recognizes and summarizes the most common critical approaches to the texts (Sab's avant la lettre commentary on slavery and María's death as a 'fall of the house of Usher' for the elite class) and focuses on new avenues for floral symbolism using native Pre-Columbian poetics whilst also pointing towards the potential study of secondary characters whose discourse differs from the overly analyzed main plots. Nevertheless, one of the chapter's greatest achievements, is the study of hair when it is separated from the body (in the form of a lock of hair, an element present in María). Hair, whilst human and thus organic, is inert and unfeeling, particularly when detached from a head of hair. Beyond the physical similarities between hair and roots or vines, Wylie emphasizes the fact that both hair and plant have a vegetative or

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