A Defense of Nature Poetry

Section VII:  Shaking the Toxic Gaze (Vociferations Part III)

Michael Mulligan

Vik Muniz's Narcissus, after Caravaggio has to be one of the most environmentally prophetic masterpieces of this century.  Narcissus died as a result of two different types of gazes.  His gaze was that of wonder and unabashed awe, but his reflection's gaze fixated him.  Controlled him.  He was the original egophiliac.  He thought his gazing was harmless, simply a pure bead of wonderment, but the reflection never let his eyes wander away. 

So, when Vik Muniz depicts Caravaggio's Narcissus using trash, this gaze theory is compounded.  We look at all of our stuff with wonder and abashed awe, not realizing that our stuff restricts us, confines us, and fixes us within its controlling hypnosis.  We love it, even if it means it will kill us. 

Vik Muniz's masterpiece helps frame a third way in which the poets raise their voices in order to wake us up.  Sometimes, poets call out bluntly (May Swenson and Allen Ginsberg, see Section V); other times, poets challenge the very core of an ideology through sending a hairline fracture into the ideology's glass castle (W. S. Merwin, see Section VI).  This section, "Shaking the Toxic Gaze," explores how James Wright and Ruth Stone vociferate through recording and juxtaposing the facts, leaving the reader to draw conclusions. 

Wright's title (Ohioan Pastoral) locates his poem within the Pastoral Tradition.  Pastoral poems depict an idyllic, charming, and blemish-free countryside, and they are often esteemed as the epitome of nature poetry.  It's just that Wright is a little more honest: 

Ohioan Pastoral

On the other side

Of Salt Creek, along the road, the barns topple

And snag among the orange rinds,

Oil cans, cold balloons of lovers.

One barn there

Sags, sags and oozes

Down one side of the copperous gully.

The limp whip of a sumac dangles

Gently against the body of a lost

Bathtub, while high in the flint-cracks

And the wild grimed trees, on the hill,

A buried gas main

Long ago tore a black gutter into the mines.

And now it hisses among the green rings

On fingers in coffins.

The barn is not a picturesque red barn with white trim, but it "Sags, sags and oozes," and it's surrounded by "oil cans," "a lost / Bathtub," "orange rinds," and used condoms.  The "limp whip of a sumac" continues the sterile-infertile-impotent motif as it "dangles" against the "body" not of a person, but of a "bathtub."  Then, in the final lines, the poem takes a turn into a deep image, an image that resonates within the reader's subconscious. 

A buried gas main

Long ago tore a black gutter into the mines.

And now it hisses among the green rings

On fingers in coffins.

Even the ring, a symbol for everlasting love, is tarnished and rattling around the skeletal finger.  The dead body never knew the fecundity of decomposition as it is isolated and alienated away from the earth.  There is no peace even for the dead. 

But the move that makes Wright's poem work is that he offers no commentary.  It is purely a juxtaposition of the littered countryside with the title, "Ohioan Pastoral."   We are left to draw conclusions and weigh the consequences.  One conclusion I draw is that Wright's poem marks the death of the pastoral tradition.  No longer can we romanticize nature.  If we look accurately, we will find that our trash creeps into the pastoral tradition and into nature poetry, for it has crept into the earth first.

Ruth Stone, a blind poet, also uses trash and juxtaposition in her recently published book In the Next Galaxy (2004).  Throughout it, Stone writes exactly what one sees: 

Trash is so cheerful, flying up

like grasshoppers in front of the reaper....

...In bits blown equally everywhere,

the gaiety of flying paper

and the black high flung pattern of flocking birds.  (Stone 31)

At first glance, the similes may seem innocuously creative.  The trash does look like “grasshoppers” in all the chaos of flight, and the “flying paper” shares the sky with the “flocking birds.”  All are “high flung pattern[s]” that can enchant the viewer.  However, there is something insidious and sarcastic in the line “Trash is so cheerful," especially when we understand what is absent:  the grasshoppers.  The trash is present while the grasshoppers are merely on the other end of the simile.  What should be leaping up in front of the reaper?  Where are the grasshoppers? 

If only one of her poems used this technique, then it would be forced to suggest that Stone is methodically depicting a world in which trash insidiously creeps into the earth and therefore into nature poetry.  As it is, In the Next Galaxy is full of poems that use the same technique.  One other example is found within “What Meets the Eye” where trash is compared to flowers: 

Trash in the yards

white as early flowers  (Stone 40)

All that is in the yard is trash.  The flowers, like the grasshoppers, are absent.  But this ushers us back to Muniz's masterpiece.  There is something hypnotically beautiful about trash.  I am reminded of the scene from American Beauty when Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley) filmed, for fifteen minutes, a trash bag caught in myriad thermal currents, in front of a brick wall.  Trash can be as captivating as "early flowers," and as hypnotic as Narcissus' reflection's gaze.  But these juxtapositions, as they objectify the images, help readers to shake off the toxic fixation upon all our stuff the moment we realize that the grasshoppers and the flowers have been usurped.    

Because both Stone and Wright objectify the trash in their poems, it helps the reader shake off the toxic, narcissist fixation upon all of our stuff.  Neither poet moralizes.  Each simply sets forth images and juxtapositions.  It is a less audible way to raise one's voice, but it still contributes our reconsideration of how we live within the ecosphere.  Do we really want a nature poetry that is full of trash? 

Some people may object to my inclusion of Stone and Wright's "nature poems," for doesn't nature poetry focus upon the untarnished beauty of the wilderness?  Why are we discussing trash?  This, though, is exactly the point of many nature poems, which explore the boundary between nature and culture, the wilderness and the city.  That boundary is full of trash.  Hopefully, Stone and Wright's poems evoke uneasiness, remorse, and possibly a repulsion directed at what has become of nature poetry and the earth.  Maybe then readers will be more inclined to heed Ginsberg's admonishment to do our laundry.    

The series of "Vociferations," comprising Sections V, VI, & VII of my defense, draws to a close.  In them, we have largely considered how NOT to live.  In the following section, we will explore a poem that illuminates how to live well, Pablo Neruda's "La Tortuga." 

Works Cited

Image from the Rena Bransten Gallery Exhibition Page <http://www.renabranstengallery.com/Muniz_Narcissus.html>

Stone, Ruth.  In the Next Galaxy.  Port Townsend:  Copper Canyon, 2004.

Wright, James.  Above the River:  The Complete Poems.  New York:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1990. 

                                                      living in new bodies       painted by ash

My First Job

by Christin Rice

My first job was writing books that I sold to my neighbors for a now forgotten tiny sum of money.  I lived in an apartment complex and had a lot of neighbors, so business was fairly lucrative for a nine year old.  I wish I could take credit for the entrepreneurial spirit, but that actually belonged to the brains of the organization: my best friend at the time and downstairs neighbor, Makiko Matsumoto.  I wish I had not lost touch with Makiko because I owe her an enormous debt of gratitude for introducing me, not to a love of business, but to a love of writing (and the belief you could make money at it…tiny sums of money, but still).

It was quite a green business too, as all our great works of literature were produced on recycled paper.  Makiko devised an unending supply of paper that we folded in half to reveal the un-used side, then “bound” with duct tape.  That girl was genius, seriously.

In true self-centered childhood fashion, I can’t remember anything other than my own books.  I hope Makiko’s were equally fascinating to her.  I wrote from experience: The Girl Who Loved Unicorns, The Girl Who Hated Cleaning Her Room.  I created a series based on a cuddly gang of bears called the Pookie Bear Pals.  They had various adventures and were a blatant rip off of the Care Bears.  Each book was written and illustrated with my glorious 30-color marker set.  When we had amassed a small library of these, we set out a table on a stoop in the middle of the apartment complex (location, location, location) and proceeded to sweet talk (or guilt) our neighbors into making a purchase.

My motivation, alas, was not yet the love of the written word.  No.  I wanted money, pure and simple.   I had recently started earning an allowance for doing chores, and as is still true today, it just never seemed like enough.  The object of my materialistic desires was not original either: I wanted a Barbie.  My mother, a recovering hippie, refused to let me own one because she thought it would give me low self esteem, given her unattainable shapeliness.  Turns out, Barbie doesn’t give you low self-esteem, Jr. High does.  But I digress.  At the time, in my little nine-year-old hierarchy of needs, Barbie stood out on top, brazenly busty with crushingly high heels.

Makiko and I sold enough for a Barbie or two, which is saying something.  I had been hoarding my allowance and anxiously awaited the next time the family went to the mall.

I had not factored in my mother’s Jedi mind tricks.  No matter how many times we went to the mall with the exact currency in my pocket, I never returned from the mall with a Barbie.  Some large, normal sized doll would be purchased instead and I never noticed the exchange happening.  I have no recollection of tears or negotiations, I went in wanting A, got B instead, and played happily with the new purchase while also writing more books to earn enough to buy a Barbie the next time we went to the mall.  It was a pretty happy existence, if a little dim on my part.  I blush to think what Makiko would have thought of my business savvy.

Imagine how this shaped my consciousness: from nine years old I believed absolutely that it was possible to earn enough money writing books to get what you wanted (or, at least, to eventually get what your mother convinced you you wanted).  I discovered the wonder of crafting stories that other people acted interested in.  I was able to express creativity in an instantly gratuitous way.  I had neighborhood support, a brilliant business partner, and a magical 30-color marker set.  Joy, possibility and story: I don’t think I’ve ever gained so much from a job since.

A Defense of Nature Poetry

Section VI:  Challenging Ideologies (Vociferations Part II)

Michael Mulligan

But if you really want to affect change, you have to send a hairline fracture through the foundation of an ideology...and wait.

This is what W. S. Merwin accomplishes in a poem published in 1967: 

For a Coming Extinction

Gray Whale

Now that we are sending you to The End

That great god

Tell him

That we who follow you invented forgiveness

And forgive nothing

I write as though you could understand

And I could say it

One must always pretend something

Among the dying

When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks

Empty of you

Tell him that we were made

On another day

The bewilderment will diminish like an echo

Winding along your inner mountains

Unheard by us

And find its way out

Leaving behind it the future

Dead

And ours

When you will not see again

The whale calves trying the light

Consider what you will find in the black garden

And its court

The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas

The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless

And foreordaining as stars

Our sacrifices

Join your word to theirs

Tell him

That it is we who are important 

Merwin challenges the ideology that says "humans are the most important creature on the face of the planet."  It is an ideology of human dominance.  This notion trickles down from several interactive sources.  Even evolutionary diagrams often depict humans emerging from the process preeminent, as if natural selection had a goal.  Merwin, though, attacks the Hebrew creation narrative.  Since Yahweh made humans on another day, and since we are in Yahweh's image, it follows (or does it?) that Yahweh would agree with the human-centered interpretation "That it is we who are important" and not the gray whale, the Great Auks, the gorillas, the sea cows, or the "irreplaceable hosts" rendered extinct due to humanity's inability to live well. 

Merwin's sarcasm is brilliant.  The gray whale is supposed to remind God that the extinctions caused by humans should not matter much, since humans are most important.  But in the very telling, the ideology is undercut.  A hairline fracture sets in.  The glass castle is suddenly unstable, especially if we understand the point the Hebrew creation narratives. 

At the root of the issue is humanity's inability to understand metaphor.  The first chapter of Genesis is poetry, which is true of all the other creation narratives within the Old Testament.  Many of them hinge on one extended metaphor:  the creation of the earth is the construction of a temple.  The writer of Proverbs personifies wisdom as a "master craftsman" who assisted as Yahweh "marked out the foundations of the earth" (Proverbs 8).  Isaiah also speaks of the "foundations of the earth," and he later compares the night sky to a "curtain" which Yahweh "spreads out like a tent to dwell in" (Isaiah 40).  The poet of Job compares the coastline to "bars and doors" (Job 38).  The psalmist states that Yahweh "has set a tabernacle for the sun" (Psalm 19).  All of these comparisons combined (foundations, curtain, tent, bars, doors, tabernacle) help us understand what it means for Yahweh to have created humans "in [his] image" (Genesis 1).  In Mesopotamia, when a temple was finished, the custom was to then place the image of the god or gods within the temple, signifying that the temple is gods' dwelling place.   

The problem is that people read the first chapter of Genesis as an historical account, or a "factual" account (as if truth is fact driven), or as a counter-argument to evolution (as if Genesis has anything to do with science), instead of reading it as it is: poetry.  In the original language, the first chapter of Genesis epitomizes Hebrew poetics, but even in translation we get the sense of repetition and parallelism. (The repetition is self-evident.  The parallelism is that two groups of three actions mirror each other:  the creation of water, sky, & land is followed by the creation of sea animals, creatures of the air, & creatures that move upon land.)  When reading poetry, we are not looking for fact.  We look for the implications of the images and the metaphors.  When the poet has God create humans in his image, placing the image within the earth, it is a tell-tale sign that the point of the creation narrative is that the earth is a temple, a dwelling place for the creator. 

Let me say that again.  The earth is a temple. 

The earth is not, first and foremost, a resource.  It is a temple, and this is the context within which humans are given "dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Genesis 1).  Having dominion within a temple is much different than having dominion over resources.   

Merwin knows, though, that many people live as if the earth is a resource to be harvested, exploited, and manipulated to serve human ends.  Many people live out the ideology of dominance as if we are entitled--as if it is a God-given right--to use and abuse the earth.  Furthermore, he knows that part of the impetus for this ideology is the (misinterpretations of) Hebrew origin stories (which have been warped out of context).  The fact that humans "were made on another day" is, in reality, the Hebrew poet's way of establishing the concept that the earth is a temple, rather than giving us free reign to drive other creatures within the temple into extinction.    

Is this not what ecology has been suggesting all along?  Eco, from the Greek oikos meaning house.  What if the house of the earth is, in reality, a temple?  I don't know about you, but I carry myself much differently when I walk within the walls of a temple than when I walk down the aisle of Home Depot.  When I am in a temple, I hope to walk as if I were amongst the Giant Sequoias of California.  If we claim the temple metaphor from Hebrew origin narratives, there is no difference.   

Because Merwin's poem directly alludes to the Genesis account of creation, it invites a critique of the (mis)interpretations that affect society's ideology.  Furthermore, it sends a hairline fracture into the ideology that states, "Humans are the preeminent creature," making us reconsider how we live within an earth where so many creatures face extinction because of us. 

In the context of my defense, Merwin's poem demonstrates another reason why nature poetry is crucial.  Many nature poems, like Merwin's, can challenge the anthropocentric ideology of dominance that too often justifies the abhorrent ways we live within the earth.  Our job is to listen. 

My next section focuses on yet another type of vociferation concerning trash and the natural world. 

Works Cited

Merwin, W. S. Migrations.  Port Townsend:  Copper Canyon, 2005.

Holy Bible.  New King James Version.  Nashville:  Broadman & Holman, 1988.

Giving up Perfect

by Erin Dunigan

It usually happens while bathing suit shopping, though the behavior is not limited to that dreaded activity.  The scenario is as follows. I will decide it is time for a new bathing suit. At whatever lucky establishment gets the blessing of my shopping presence, I will proceed to try on at least ten to fifteen swimsuits, examining each carefully. “Nope, not that one” becomes a mantra. 

Some time and many suits later, I will have exhausted the pile and still be left with nothing to adorn my body in the coming summer months of beach activities.  Given time, I will continue this search until it, and I, am literally exhausted.

The only thing that changes that process is a specific deadline, like an invitation to some beach activity for which I will need to have obtained the new swimsuit. If that is the case I will end up selecting one that is less bad than the others, but still not usually what I had in mind.

I have spent years caught in this process of bathing suit shopping, which is why I try to get the most wear out of the existing suit as possible before entering the madness yet again.  But then one day it hit me, out of the clear blue sky, no swimsuits even in sight. I can’t remember now even what I was thinking about at the time I had the bathing suit epiphany, but it has changed my life. Well, actually, it hasn’t changed it at all, but if I would only listen to the bathing suit epiphany it has the potential to change my life.

The reason that it is virtually impossible for me to find a bathing suit, without some real form of pressure such as the public humiliation of showing up at a beach party in the birthday suit instead, is that in none of them do I look like a model. The only problem is, I don’t look like a model anyway. 

Somehow, in trying on bathing suits, I expect that, when I look in the mirror, I will look, well, perfect. Hmm, those thighs are looking a bit big… Is that cellulite on the backside?  It took me a long time to realize that what I was rejecting, in the piles of discarded swimsuits on the changing room floor, was not really any of them, per se, but it was rather the inability to accept my less than perfect physique that kept me bound to try on suit after suit after suit, somehow hoping that one of them would magically change all of that.

The problem is, the perfect bathing suit doesn’t exist. Not, that is, if you are putting an imperfect body inside of it. But even knowing that I still approach the process in the same way. I still try on suit after suit after suit, hoping that maybe one of them might make me look like that model. I don’t even need to be that demanding, actually. Because I don’t really need or want to look like a model. I just want to look like I am perfectly in shape, no cellulite, and physically fit. Perfect.

But instead of spending time working out, eating healthy, lifting weights or doing yoga, I focus on the search for the perfect suit, and that is the fallacy of the whole thing. Instead of focusing my energy on something that might actually make a positive, tangible, realistic difference in the situation, something that is within my control and is something I can change, I expend, I would say even waste, my energy pursuing this false vision of perfection.

The bigger problem, I realized that day of the epiphany, is that this is not isolated behavior.  It doesn’t just plague me when it comes time to go bathing suit shopping. It happens at the video store (how old fashioned of me, I know, to actually go into a store to rent a DVD) when I must browse through all of the new releases, alphabetically, even if I find something I want to watch that starts with A.

It happens when dating, or actually, when considering the potential of dating.  I would never admit to looking for a guy who is perfect—come on, I know better than that. But there are many other disguises to give this behavior. “Oh, we just don’t have enough in common.” Or, “I am not sure we bring out the best in each other.” With dating, unlike with bathing suit shopping, there is no built in deadline, other than the eggs, which at some point will just get lonely and go into hiding, giving up any chance of company.

And it happens when looking for a job, which I have been doing, in theory, for the past two and a half years. Oh sure, again, I know all of the proper responses. “I am not looking for the perfect job, I am just looking for the right one.” That sounds even more holy when the job is in ministry, after having spent three years in seminary preparing. It wasn’t even something I consciously realized I was doing.  I honestly thought that I was really not looking for perfect, just waiting for right. Except that realization that every time I tried on a new career path and looked in the mirror, well, it still looked like me staring back.

So, I have decided it is time. I am giving up perfect. I am not exactly sure what that means, or what it will look like.  But needing to figure those things out ahead of time would be a bit like, well, a bit like waiting for it to be perfect. In order to appease my now panicked need for perfection I am offering a compromise. This giving up perfect does not have to mean pursuing imperfect.

Rather, instead, it is allowing what is to be without trying to make it something it is not. In other words, it is what it is, and that’s okay. So, with swimsuits, it means being okay with the reality in the mirror. With DVD rentals it might mean more of an arranged marriage with NetFlix. Dating? Do I really have to give up perfect in all aspects? Because that would mean actually going on dates rather than ruling them out before they even have a chance to take shape.  As for the job situation, it might actually mean taking a risk and seeing where it might lead. In other words, allowing my gifts and passions to have an opportunity to flourish, even if it is not the perfect situation.

To be honest, I am not sure that I have it in me, to give up perfect. But, I guess, even with that, it is what it is.

Letters to Myself

by Christin Rice

             I have been an avid journal-keeper since I was eight and got my first diary with a lock on it.  It might have been the lock that did it: the idea that I could keep my thoughts all to myself, that there was a place I could process my world.  It is both entertaining (to myself only) and enlightening (again, only to myself and possibly my therapist) to re-read these, as I’ve grown into so many different selves since then.  I recently happened upon one of these journals, circa age sixteen, full of bad, rhyming poetry and pathos. 

I sit in class

stare at the clock,

cross my eyes

wink at a jock.

I’m lost in space,

too dizzy to see,

I want to leave

but wait for me

I come out of hiding

within myself,

my brain is sliding,

nothing rhymes with self.

I don’t make any sense,

don’t want to try

I’m so confused

I want to cry.

I hope no one sees

I don’t want them to know

that I have no heart

and I’m feeling low.

What a silly room,

it’s too square

I’m so bored

I tear my hair.

This chair is hard,

the clock is wrong

I wonder how

much more is long.

If you understand

this stupid rhyme

I’d call home,

here’s a dime.

 The boy that fueled so much bad poetry was absolutely unworthy, perhaps an early indication of my inner struggle with dating tools.  This particular journal chronicled my discovery of the word fuck.  Not in the verb sense, just in the ‘I now need to insert it into every other sentence’ sense.  It was actually a pivotal shift in my writing, as prior to that I anxiously tried to gloss over every unhappiness.  Once I discovered my inner explicative, I finally began the long, painful process of becoming myself.  Now, looking back on the former me I feel mostly exhaustion: it took so much energy to keep up the façade.  But in lots of ways, it was easier.  Now with my newfound sensitivity to each little way I’m being authentic, I find a new type of exhaustion—the necessity of being completely honest with myself.  Believe me, it is really getting in the way of dating tools.

            Whereas I can read my sixteen-year-old cringe-worthy journals as letters to myself, and feel only compassion for that crazy girl, the current inspection of self is not so kind.  More than twice that in age, it just seems I would, if not be wiser, at least be more quick to act on my wisdom.  But I keep writing, because if there’s one thing evident by a re-read of an old journal it’s that writing has been integral to finding my inner explicative and struggling to figure out just how the fuck to live. 

A Defense of Nature Poetry

Section V: Vociferations 

 Michael Mulligan

Vociferate shares the same root as voice (vōx meaning to call), but its third syllable derives from the root ferre, meaning to bear or to support much like a beam that supports a house. The roots, when combined, create an audacious metaphor suggesting that something as intangible as words can support, almost with a physical beam-like presence, an ideology and a political movement. 

My number one criticism of vociferations is that, too often, the people who actually listen already side with the speaker. As we move into exploring the environmental vociferations of Allan Ginsberg and May Swenson, my fear is that the audience who needs to hear their words the most will already have moved on.

 Activism, or environmental vociferations, is my third reason why nature poetry is significant. As a reminder, my other two reasons are as follows:   

 1)      Nature Poetry assists the cultivation of an ecological self; readers of nature poetry therefore experience the fullness of being embedded within innumerable relationships within the ecosphere.

2)      Nature Poetry assists us as we explore the boundary between nature and culture. What is humanity's place within the ecosphere? What is nature's place within an urban setting? Does the earth's language matter? 

 The two overarching ideas overlap, and as we saw with Bishop's "The Moose" (Section IV), environmental activism overlaps as well. It matters that the smell of gasoline mingles with the smell of the moose, and it makes sense that as we identify with all that is within the ecosphere, we begin to care about the impact of humanity's dwelling. It is our poets who know this, and many have written to wake the rest of us up. 

 Allan Ginsberg, known for his controversial "Howl," was not afraid to raise his voice. In a lesser known poem, "Homework," Ginsberg speaks on behalf of the planet:

 Homework
Homage Kenneth Koch

If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up
     Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
     Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the
     Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
     Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood
     & Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze
     out the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon
     till it came out clean.

 Three moves make this poem work. First, Ginsberg makes countless allusions, from the "Agent Orange" used in the Vietnam war, to the location of the creation of the atomic bomb, to the effects of pollution on human structures ("Parthenon & Sphinx") and on the environment ("Love Canal"), to the barbarism of poaching (ahhh, the irony of using "Ivory Soap" to clean up mindless killings of elephants for their tusks), and so on. All of these allusions extend the scope of the poem to encompass the global environmental (and political) challenges before us. 

 Ginsberg's other two moves push the reader from the global to the local. It would be too overwhelming to enumerate upon all the devastation humans have wreaked upon each other and the earth if it weren't for the extended metaphor of "Laundry" (his second move). Laundry is simple. It makes the reader think, "Yea, I can clean up my little part of the earth. I can do my laundry." His final move is found in the title. The reader is assigned "Homework." Homework, like laundry, is simple. We have a due date (ASAP), and our assignment is to figure out what we can do locally in order to make a difference. All said, this poem epitomizes the green motto: 

 Think Global. Act Local.   

 We ought to educate ourselves as to what the global challenges are, and then we act locally to do our part. Finish the homework. Do the laundry.   

 Another poet who, like Ginsberg, speaks out to affect change is May Swenson. Her poem triumphs in an extended metaphor, which compares weather to a horse:

 Weather

I hope they never get a rope on you, weather.
I hope they never put a bit in your mouth.
I hope they never pack your snorts
into an engine or make you wear wheels.

I hope the astronauts will always have to wait
till you get off the prairie
because your kick is lethal,
your temper worse than a megaton.

I hope your harsh main will grow forever,
and blow where it will,
that your slick hide will always shiver
and flick down your bright sweat.

Reteach us terror, weather,
with your teeth on our ships,
your hoofs on our houses,
your tail swatting our planes down like flies.

Before they make a grenade of our planet
I hope you’ll come like a comet,
oh mustang—fire-eyes, upreared belly—
bust the corral and stomp us to death. 

 If anything can teach us humility, it is the weather. Humanity will never be able to tame it or control it. The main gist of the poem is that weather is more powerful than anything humans can create, including nuclear megatons, but Swenson generates a sense of urgency. We are in process of turning our planet into a "grenade," and unless something puts us in our place and wakes us up, we will continue on our path of destruction. Weather can do this.  Weather can "reteach us terror" and remind us that no rope, no bit, can domesticate the elemental forces of the earth.     

 My only concern with activist poems is that they often only inspire people who already agree. Maybe this is enough. Maybe it is ok that activist poems strengthen the cords binding like-minded individuals together, for is this not the formula for any revolution?

 I am reminded of the fourteenth chapter of Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck speaks of how the "I" turns into a "We." 

 Instead of saying, "I am concerned about poaching, the destruction of forests, the health of ecosystems, the wanton waste of a consumerist society, and the sheer lack of humility in recognizing how we are, for better or worse, embedded within the ecosystems of the ecosphere, etcetera"--the activist poems enable us to say, "We are concerned...." 

 And when the "I" becomes a "We," an ideology takes root. Potential energy is turned Kinetic, until nothing can stop the revolution.

 Works Cited

 Ginsberg, Allen. "Homework." The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. Ed. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1988.

 Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 1967. Swenson, May. "Weather." From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002. Ed. Ishmael Reed. New York: Thunder Mouth, 2003. 

Katie Burke

No Divide

"Katie - I know you don't talk to Jill anymore, but I thought you should know about her condition. She is also pregnant with twins, so this is a risky surgery that they're doing tonight. See Kelly's email below. Talk to you soon. Molly"  

"Hi, Molly. Jill said she hasn't talked to you and wanted me to fill you in. It's not good, but everyone's thinking positively. Basically, they tested one more sample of fluid, and it showed malignant cells, so it is a tumor. Beyond that, the doctors just aren't sure and are very perplexed, so they've decided to do surgery, during which they'll do more tests and maybe take the tumor out, maybe take the whole muscle out, depending on what they find. -Kelly"

So this is how it happens. You love Jill with your whole heart, for years and through fights and in support of her dreams. You laugh together at your group's lunch spot, at the lockers outside Mr. Lundy's classroom.

You pass notes in the hallway, and before each Biology class, you hope she has a new one ready for you - because science is boring, and her teen angst is your world, because you're a teen too, and she is your friend. There is no rational separation, no divide between her hurts and yours.  

The last time you see Jill before you both leave for college, you bend forward, your sobs propelling your head into your hands and your chest toward the floor. You gather your strength and look at her ... and she, too, is overcome.

The fights continue beyond high school, and who can remember how they start or why they end, but they do, many times. Friendship repair now means interstate phone calls, and you forsake the notes and replace them with emails. Until one day, when a swift email exchange ends it all: she cuts you down like many times before, and that marks one time too many, and you write her off and tell her you're done.

Three years later, Molly forwards you Kelly's "it is a tumor" email.

"Jill. Molly told me about your terrible news. I don't know if you want to hear from me, but I have to say that I love you, and I'm here for you if you want me to be. Katie"

"Katie, Although we haven't been in touch in several years, you are one of my oldest and dearest friends, and I would certainly want to hear from you. The doctors are confident that this will be successfully treated and I will be fine. One doctor said that radiation melts these types of tumors, and there's evidence that my body has been killing it off on its own. So, I will be fine. I love you. Jill"

Three months later, Jill's husband starts a blog to chronicle her medical status. You are grateful for this, as no one has answered your emails requesting updates. From the blog, you learn that in those three months between the tumor email and the blog, Jill's life has been terrible, painful, bedridden. Chemo and radiation. And you've only been in the periphery, because right now, that's how close Jill can let anyone get - except her closest friends, of which you are no longer one.

Though your sobs heave you forward as you read the blog, feeling helpless to resolve either Jill's cancer or your broken friendship, or both, you know that "as close as you can get" is as near as you should be. The friendship didn't work, and it wasn't for lack of love ... but when her capacity to reach beyond sickness is limited, and the years between you are many, you accept that your presence in her life is reduced to notes.

Notes. Just like old times.

So you send emails, and then you travel back in time and send old-fashioned mail: the "I'm here to support you through your cancer" card. The one you never imagined sending her, when life was simple and your arguments were all that lay between you.

And Jill, who stood and laughed with you for hours in Disneyland lines, feels impossibly far away. Cancer separates you now, but there's still no divide between her pain and your own. 

One day, you take an emotional risk. You call Jill's home, terrified she will answer and say you've got some nerve calling at a time like this, given that you've missed everything that happened these past few months. Or maybe her husband will pick up the phone and say it. And even though you emailed for updates, and even though the last news was positive, you won't know what to say in response.

Forgoing the call and sending an email would be far less risky. But you trust that Jill still needs you, if only in recorded voice message form. Suddenly, the thought of sending only an email feels irresponsible and selfish.

The phone rings. The outgoing recording features Jill's lively voice, and she sounds so happy, you know it was recorded over three months ago.

You leave a message. Finally, Jill feels closer. And you hope she feels it, too.

(Writer's Note: Other than mine, the names provided in this post are changed, to protect the anonymity of the people referenced herein.)

White Wine and NPR

 by Valerie Searing

driving over the ocean, we can see two islands of light coupling our east and west.

the night is wilting like an iris.  our eyes glazed by this revelation and silence.

this          is where we exist.      

you hold my hand across black leather and blow haze into my face.

three years ago, the poems knew the force of your wind.  jazz had never been so violent.

drinking white wine to NPR, you sliced peaches down the middle and filled oats with brown sugar.   i wondered what it was that you hated about me so much that made you invite me to dinner.  i brought the wine; you brought the pipe. 

smoke was remedy for silence.  we were writing the same stanza.

i tell you to play jazz forever, because your face is straight.  my fingers imagine your hair a river; your eyes are blue to shadows, and we regret not talking more.

you were mine, but i didn’t know you. only mingus held your hand. 

germany was distance between severed.  we met those missing and walked fanfare streets, laughing and planning for tattoos and future craze.  i never stayed long enough.

the poem was you in midnight parks and three uses for swings, lips, fingers.  you made the best food and a fool of me. 

For Shit’s Sake

by Gordon Gartrell

The thing about shit is, everyone can relate to it.  It is the one unifying thing we have as God’s creation.  To my knowledge, everything shits.  Granted, I say that as an English major as opposed to a Biology expert.  Perhaps there is a biologist reading this who wants to challenge this idea by bringing up some type of mollusk that doesn’t poop but instead recycles its own waste back into its digestive system.  To them I say that said mollusk is inconsequential to God’s design, and quite possibly it was an oversight on His part.  I often wonder if God poops, or more selfishly, if we will poop in Heaven.  I have heard that we will feast while ensconced in glory, so I have to assume that we will evacuate our bowels as well.  The only difference is that every poop results in a clean cut – let’s be honest, pooping isn’t the problem, it’s the wiping.  Even the most painful and disgusting of BM’s still results in a slightly orgasmic feeling, we all abhor the potential finger-painting that follows.

But I digress.

The word “shit” is a fascinating part of our vernacular.  It has a great many derivatives and always makes for an exciting round of adult Mad Libs.  Like “aloha” meaning both goodbye and hello, shit has the honor of being both bad (played like shit) and good (that song was the shit).  To fully understand shit, and the role it plays in our lives, we must look at what animal produces it.

Bullshit.  This is essentially something that is a fabrication or untruth.  It does not necessarily mean a bold faced lie, but perhaps a misrepresentation of the subject matter at hand.  It can also be used to describe a conversation of minimal substance, i.e. “Nothing important, just talking about a bunch of bullshit.”

Horseshit.  This is a collection of absolutely unnecessary discussions or activities that are complete wastes of time.  Nothing good can be inferred from something that has been described as “total horseshit.”

Apeshit.  This can be a whole lot of fun.  When I see a chimpanzee throwing its own feces I can’t help but be a little envious.  Even if its intentions are malicious, there is a certain amount of unabashed glee inherent in the process that makes me wish there were moments when I could tolerate the feel of my own poop enough to toss it at someone who has irked me.  When people go “apeshit” it implies lunacy, but not always in a way that is problematic, but instead something freeing in a primal sense.

Batshit.  This implies insanity.  If someone has gone batshit insane, then they are capable of just about any heinous act.  I’m not sure why guano and madness are linked but I do know that every time I’ve been somewhere with people and a bat shows up, everyone loses their minds.  Perhaps The Lost Boys had a bigger impact on us all than we fully realize.

            Kiefer + mullet + fangs = sheer terror

While these scatological descriptors provide sufficient categorization for a variety of situations, I can’t help but feel like we need something that encapsulates the most severe of circumstances.  I have perused the food chain to find another possible term for classification.  Sharkshit was too alliterative, birdshit was too blasé, and dragonshit was too mythical.  I was left with only one option to define the absolute worst that life has to offer: Manshit.

There may be nothing more reprehensible than human fecal matter.  Especially if it is found outside of the context of an unflushed toilet – which is bad enough mind you.  I always feel somewhat surprised when I see someone else’s turd in the toilet when I open the lid.  On a conscious level, I understand that other people use these things in the same fashion that I do, but on a subconscious level I suppose that I like to imagine that commode elves come in and tear down and rebuild new toilets in the blink of an eye making every plopping its own unique experience.  When I see that melting frayed rope staring back at me, I realize that there are no such creatures, just forgetful people who seem to have had an awful lot to eat.

Human poop on the ground is quite possibly the most disturbing sight in the history of life.  I’ll never forget the first time I saw manshit outside of a toilet.  I was at summer camp in seventh grade.  I walked into the bathroom and there it was in all its tacky, glistening glory.  Several feet away from the stall on the tile floor laid the human soft serve pile and I was mortified.  I tried to get off the floor as if a live electrical wire had hit the wading pool I was standing in.  I felt like touching the same tile was the same as standing in the shit itself.  I backed out of the restroom slowly as if I was watching a wolverine eat a toddler; I didn’t want to move too quickly so as to arouse it to come after me.  Once out of sight, I quickly ran to get an adult and while they obviously agreed that the poop needed to be removed, they didn’t quite share my terror.

One time when I was camping I had to take care of my business and was compelled to poop behind a tree.  I had never felt like such a waste of evolution in all my life.  I couldn’t shake the feeling that I am a successful, married man with children and should not be squatting over a pile of rocks with paper towels in my hand.  I couldn’t help but think I was way too American to be doing such a thing. 

Given our diet and hygiene, manshit is vile.  All other forms of manure can be tolerated, but I guarantee you that if should ever step in a pile of human excrement you will consider throwing your shoe away before even thinking about cleaning it.  I might even contemplate moving to a different state to try and piece my life back together after such an event.  I propose we embrace the word “manshit” as the all encompassing synonym for awfulness.

If you wondering how best to use the term, here is a helpful example: When someone cuts you off on the freeway, you could say that was horseshit.  But when someone cuts you off on the freeway and then they throw a rotten pumpkin filled with dead kittens at your windshield, that would be manshit.

  (Robertson)

A Defense of Nature Poetry

Section I:  Nature Poetry and the Ecological Self

(for the Introduction, click here)

Michael Mulligan

Arne Naess, the mountaineer and philosopher who first used the term "Deep Ecology," defines two selves:  the ecological self and the alienated self (262).  The alienated self needs little explanation, but it may be helpful to note that the ecological self is that part of us that recognizes our interconnectivity with all that environs (or surrounds) us.  These two selves comprise the very crux of human existence. 

In poetic terms, John Donne captures this tension in his well-known meditation:  "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."  To be human is to know both the alienation of the island as well as the community of the mainland, sometimes even simultaneously. 

We have two sides of the same coin:  the island and the mainland; the isolated and the communal; the alienated and the ecological.  But this is where Nature poetry can be most illuminating.  Many nature poems explore some aspect of the movement from the alienated self to the ecological self.  This movement encapsulates the number one reason why Nature poetry is more than a picturesque painting of words. 

In Walt Whitman's verse, the desperation of the alienated self is explored through the image of a solitary spider.  Whitman marvels at the seemingly futile attempts of a spider to connect with something...anything...and then he compares the spider to his soul: 

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark'd where on the little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres

          to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile

          anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my

          soul.  (564-65)

He seeks a web of connections.  He seeks to expand his alienated self so that it enters into the fullness of the ecological self, and there is perhaps no other work that so intensely captures the abounding energy of the ecological self than "Song of Myself."  This is not the ramblings of a megalomaniac, nor is it egophilia.  It is ecophilia:  the love of interrelationships.  We must recognize that Whitman sings of every (and I mean every) single entity that his Soul's spider-thread anchored too, every bridge his soul has crossed in order to identify with whomever is on the other side.  This is why page after page enumerates upon this life-form and that life-form, "absorbing all to myself and for this song" (199). 

Whitman reveals the "origin of all poems," which is nothing short of a being that expands through its identification with all that is within the ecosphere.  The whole point of "Song of Myself" is to pass the gift of listening (and consequently identifying with other life-forms thereby expanding one's ecological self) on to the reader:

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the

          origin of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are

          millions of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor

          look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the

          spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things

          from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.  (189-190, underline added)

One example of "listening" emerges from Whitman's identification with Oxen.  The Oxen, therefore, exemplify one instance where the "ductile anchor" of his Soul's thread held on: 

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy

          shade, what is that you express in your eyes?

It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.  (199)

Part of his song celebrates the often overlooked miracles within the earth--miracles his Soul has identified with: 

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of

            the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and

            the egg of the wren,

And the tree-toad is the chef-d'œuvre for the highest,

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of

            heaven,

And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all

            machinery,

And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any

            statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of

            infidels.  (217)

Along with the nonhuman life of the ecosphere, Whitman celebrates each and every human being from every walk of life.  Page after page celebrates individual after individual.  It is as if anything that every lived, is living, or will live is compressed into his Song:

All these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,

And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,

And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.  (203)

The spider thread connections are so abundant that Whitman would burst if it were not for the outlet of his song:

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill

          me,

If I could not now and always send a sun-rise out of me.  (213) 

Whitman's song, then, reflects the awareness that he is not an isolated or alienated self, but rather a communal and ecological self.  He is intimately embedded within the mainland.

Whitman's lines, quoted above, help establish one critical aspect of Nature poetry.  Often, Nature poetry celebrates how that inscrutable part of us (Whitman calls it our Soul) expands as it identifies with that which surrounds us.  This ecological identification often assumes a much muted presence in our lives, which, in turn, diminishes us as human beings.  Reading Nature poetry can act as a counter-influence, reminding us and teaching us that to be human is to be embedded within the interrelations of the ecosphere.     

The relationship between Nature poetry and the ecological self, explored fairly quickly here, will be the focus of several of the following sections in "A Defense of Nature Poetry."  Though the theme will be constant, each poet to be explored presents a unique nuance that helps deepen, line by line, the ecological self.    

The next section will feature another American voice: Emily Dickinson.  Her Nature poetry further explores the ecological self, but it does so from a different angle.  Whereas Whitman is known for his ever reaching voice, Dickinson is known for her succinct, coy, and cryptic poetics.  It is no mistake that I am beginning with Whitman and Dickinson, for they are held in high esteem as the headwaters of all the American poetry written thereafter. 

Works Cited

Naess, Arne.  "Identification as a Source of Deep Ecological Attitudes."  Deep Ecology.  Ed.  Michael Tobias.  San Diego:  Avant, 1984.  256-270.

Robertson, Mary Ann.  "Spider Spinning Web (blue)."  September 2005.  22 February 2009 <http://www.pbase.com/marobertson/image/49789411>.

Whitman, Walt.  Whitman Poetry and Prose.  New York:  Library of America, 1982.