Focus on your assigned poem, thinking about how that poem writes the environment or nature? What is nature or the environment in the poem? What is the relationship between humans and nature in the poem? What kind of language is used? What is being said about nature? What is the speaker’s connection to nature? Does the speaker see nature in spiritual terms? Political terms? Philosophical terms? What kind of connection can you make between your poems, or the poems generally, and Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek?
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ReplyDelete"White-Eyes" expresses the feeling of being in nature in winter; it is quiet; it is white. The animals reflect the whiteness and serenity of their surroundings. The bird he speaks of blends into the snow and in the end it is difficult to distinguish between snow and bird. The bird in the top of the tree exemplifies how winter has the power to quiet what is around it; only the wind and the bird's songs make the noises, however, even they are hushed by the falling blanket of snow. The poet conveys the similarity between the bird and humans in that they both are restless in winter, yet silenced by the cold stillness of winter. He compares snow falling to bird feathers and stars, which gives the reader a deeper understanding of the qualities of snow; when snow falls, it falls delicately and lightly like a feather and it is also bright like stars. Snow has both an illuminating and silencing quality that is expressed throughout the poem. The poet speaks in terms that communicate the image and feeling of his subject (winter). He uses similes to reveal this and to highlight the many qualities that things in nature share. He also depicts the image of falling snow by the way in which he wrote the poem; the words and lines in the poem are placed in a way that looks like falling snow. It is evident that the poet has experienced and observed what winter is.
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ReplyDeleteJames Wright’s “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island Minnesota,” clearly takes on an emotional tone. Much like Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the piece stresses the importance of seeing nature beyond its face value. The speaker is lying recumbent on a hammock at his friend’s farm. As the farm is not his, the speaker is not in his typical surroundings and is taking the sights in for the first time. His mind is not functioning in the usual logical and rational way but is dream-like and given to random associations. Throughout the poem, personification blends the divide between human and non-human life: the butterfly is “asleep;” cowbells “follow one another;” and droppings “blaze up.” Images occupy the speaker’s mind as he moves from the sight of the butterfly, to the sound of the cowbells, to the droppings of the horses, to the darkening of the evening, to the flying chicken hawk. All are images of beauty found in their appropriate and natural environments. The speaker, who is not in his natural environment, is profoundly drawn in to the images surrounding him and concludes that “[he has] wasted [his] life,” perhaps suggesting that up until that point his life had been a waste because he did not appreciate beauty in all areas of life. The question is, does the speaker's epiphany become our own?
ReplyDelete“The Chance to Love Everything” paints the environment first as a very inviting place with several creatures mulling around. It then quickly switches to a nervous fear and then a strange love of the large animal outside the tent (perhaps a bear). The relationship between humans and nature in this poem is illustrated by an intense curiosity, fear of the unknown, and the feeling that the author wants to give themselves a chance to love anything, no matter how scary it may seem; hence the name of the poem. The author uses very vivid language, describing all the animals not by their names, but by their characteristics, such as teeth, eyes, color, sounds, and they way they move. You can almost identify all the animals in the poem without her ever giving you a specific name for any of them. The speaker seems to want to have a deep connection with nature but just like any human, her fear of the unknown or dangerous stops her momentarily. Once she overcomes her fear, it is too late and she misses the animal. She is so fascinated by the animal, she asks herself if she actually went out of the tent and really saw the animal and reached out for it. The “fading of the dearest, wildest hope” line illustrates how bad she actually wanted to see, overcome her fear of, and ultimately love this large, frightening, possibly dangerous animal. She sees nature as many animals who she admires but there are some animals she is innately afraid of because of their size, unpredictability, claws, etc. Even though she is scared of said animal(s), she wants to grow as a person by overcoming her fear and having the chance to love everything. I believe she feels just because an animal is different or frightening, it still deserves the right to be loved. All the poems and readings so far seem to be a persons way of individually describing their view of nature and their desire to have some sort of deeper connection with nature.
ReplyDelete“Riprap” begins with a setting up or building of something from nature or made from nature “solidity of bark, leaf, or wall” in the mind. At the same time, the author is building up the poem through language, the placing of words, a riprap of things. The first line “Before your mind like rocks”, is the base, the structure of the poem, just as rocks, or the geology of the Earth is the basic core of any ecosystem—the first layer to begin to build upon. Further down she mentions “These poems, people, lost ponies with Dragging Saddles—and rocky sure-foot trails” in a tone that has so far been casual and observant develops a more wistful edge. As if her words and people, have lost their way, they are not wild and free but chained down, ready to go but waiting for a rider or saddled to something intangible. Yet, there is paths carved out, the “rocky sure-foot trails”, as if these structural features are the only stability or constant to be depended on, to lead the way. Still further down, the line: “ In the thin loam, each rock a word”, one can find a parallel between each rock a part of it’s own story or journey and the words creating this poem, the author’s own story or perspective expressed. “Granite: ingrained” reflects again this duality between rocks and words, the word granite is almost completed in the word ingrained, but also the author could be referring to minerals composing the granite, the story behind the rock. Or even in the following line how the granite was formed. One can’t help getting struck by the perversity of something we view as solid, and unaltering in form such as rocks, cliffs, mountains, go through lifecycles change and become new rocks, new landforms. “All change, in thoughts,/ As well as things.”
ReplyDeleteJoy Harjo’s poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here” shows a very interesting way of representing nature. The poem continually speaks of a table and all the things that happen around a table, but it is really talking about the connections between the environment and human nature itself. It begins by mentioning that “the world begins at a kitchen table,” and people are always around it to eat “the gifts of the earth.” Clearly this is to remind the reader how vital nature is to us, because everything is created at the kitchen table: children are born and then turn into adults while others are prepared for burial, dreams come to life as joy or sorrow, and wars are delegated all at the same spot. It is easy for the reader to imagine groups of people gathering at the kitchen table, in good times or bad, young or old, and thinking about how life is progressing. Compared to Dillard’s "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," nature and the environment, including people and their lives, are always part of the same thing. Nature isn’t a place where you can go, or even something you can search for, because it’s always there. As Harjo notes, “we must eat to live,” and to do these things makes us part of the natural environment.
ReplyDeleteIn the poem “Anchorage” by Joy Harjo and there are 6 stanzas, but each stanza has a different set number of lines. ”Anchorage” is a narrative poem, but also free verse because there is no obvious meter or rhyme scheme. Anchorage has a very “ E.E. Cummings aspect” to it because Harjo plays with how the words actually look on the page, giving the poem a very free flowing aspect.
ReplyDeleteAs the title of the poem is “Anchorage” it would seem likely that this is both where the poem is set and what it is about. The entire first stanza simply describes the town of Anchorage and the nature around it.
There is no real thesis to the poem, except for the very last line, which ties the whole work together. “Who would believe the fantastic and terrible story of all of our survival those who never meant to survive?” This is a great example of nature, as in the natural world, and nature, as in human nature. Nature is both terrible and fantastic and consists of ebbing and flowing and all we try to do is survive.