SOURCE: “Displacing Darwin and Descartes: The Bodily Transgressions of Fielding Burke, Octavia Butler, and Linda Hogan,” in Isle: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Vol. 3, No. 1, Summer, 1996, pp. 55-64.

In the following excerpt, Alaimo studies Hogan's handling of nature in her poems. Instead of humanizing nature and animals, the critic contends, Hogan gives them their own identity, an identity that doesn't always conform to common expectations of characterization.

Linda Hogan, in an interview with Patricia Clark Smith, stated that after participating in a research project on wolves in northern Minnesota she realized that “wolves really are the projection of people's inner fears or desires.” She also discovered how “difficult it is for people to see difference—between one human being and another, between species. What people look for is similarities—or shadow—the shadow-self, as Jung says, so you can look for evil on the outside and not...