| Sumario: | Speaking to a small audience in Brussels in 1947, Francis Ponge described his poetic practice as "writing in the desert." This paper examines Ponge's notion of "writing in the desert" as it pertains to his 1942 collection Le Parti pris des choses, focusing on the ecological critique embedded within a seemingly dry discussion of things, particularly his discussion of the pebble. In turning to the mundane and the quotidian, more specifically by writing about humble objects such as the pebble, Ponge challenges us to not only reconsider our relationship to the natural world, but to recognize the linguistic dimension which undergirds our conception of any such relationship. This analysis examines the challenge presented by Ponge's pebble in relation to a more famous literary pebble, that of Antoine Roquentin in Jean-Paul Sartre's novel La Nausée. While the pebble in Sartre provokes a metaphysical disturbance, this paper argues that the pebble in Ponge presents an urgent ecological critique, a critique concerned with poetic expression as such.
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