Waste in Verse: Forms of Waste in Contemporary North American Poetry

Abstract

This article examines the intersection of waste, language, and contemporary North American poetry, arguing that waste is not merely a material crisis but a rhetorical and ideological construct. Drawing on various waste theories, the study explores how poets Martín Espada, Rita Wong, Evelyn Reilly, and Adam Dickinson engage with waste not only as a thematic concern but as a formal and linguistic strategy. Espada exposes the bureaucratic erasure of human disposability through acts of naming; Wong dissects the corporate euphemisms that obscure environmental violence; Reilly mirrors the endurance of plastic through poetic excess and fragmentation; and Dickinson reveals waste’s infiltration into the body itself. By treating poetry as a site of salvage, reclamation, and resistance, these works challenge the illusion of disappearance that underpins contemporary structures of exclusion and disposability. Ultimately, this article argues that waste and poetry share a crucial function: both unsettle categories, disrupt meaning, and refuse to vanish.