‘Your earth is foul:’ the image of earth in Holocaust poetry

This paper examines how Holocaust poets use the image of earth to convey a shattered world. Earth features as world or planet, but also as ground and soil, and in both meanings is participant in and witness to genocide. Moreover, earth becomes a figure for understanding the natural world and its relation to human horror. Valuable observations are made about how, in the Holocaust setting, humans experienced their environment and how they represent it poetically. Though the ecocritical view often calls for moving away from the anthropocentric standpoint, the poets examined ultimately insist on the centrality of the human victim.