My dissertation considers the role of the “poet” and the “king” in the United States. I address how the poetic and the legal create and organize the environmental imagination of American society by putting key pieces of legislation in conversation with Black and Indigenous female poets. This undercommons method highlights the relationship of Black and Indigenous bodies with the natural world and the relationship of the body politic with the natural world.

Examining the contiguities and differences present within these texts and the contexts from which they arise provides a multidimensional understanding of earth, water, and air. In chapter one, I look at poetry by Gwendolyn Bennett, Lucille Clifton, and Joy Harjo alongside The Organic Act of 1916, The Wilderness Act of 1964, and the Environmental Protection Act of 1970. In chapter two, I compare poems by Clifton and Harjo to The Water Pollution Control Act of 1972. Chapter three examines poems by Mae V. Cowdery, Bennett, and Clifton alongside The Air Pollution Control Act of 1955.

Ultimately, I aim to show how the songs of these poets echo across the American landscape in ways that resist and, sometimes, affirm the organizational and regulatory power of the legislation.