Response to Contemporary Nature Poetry

As my understanding of craft grows, I find that my appreciation for different types of poetry grows as well. But that doesn’t necessarily equate to significant changes in taste. I still prefer the linear narrative, the poem that tells a story using conventional sentence structure – basically, the accessible poem. But more than that, I prefer poetry that has an accessible “moment of realization,” or a significant line (or stanza, or word, etc.) that demonstrates the writer has learned or discovered something they weren’t already looking for. I like, particularly, when the writer communicates that moment with the reader effectively – an “aha moment” if you will. I have to admit, Mary Oliver’s poetry falls into that category with a greater ease than many of the writers we read this week. (That’s not to say these poems do not have a linear narrative, or that they are lacking proper sentence structure, or that they do not have an “aha moment). Admittedly, while I typically find something in a poem that resonates with me, something that I can grab hold of as a point of entry, I did have some difficulty with several of these selections. There are, however, a few I enjoyed. I’ll give brief examples, here, of both.

Rogers “The Hummingbird: A Seduction” is just that, a seduction. She uses the small birds as a symbol of human interaction, a sensual erotic kind of ritual, an attraction occurring in nature that mirrors the human connection. And while I had some difficulty in recognizing its greater significance, I recognize that my failure doesn’t mean that one does not exist.

W. S. Merwin’s “The Last One” is somewhat dense in its construction. The lines are all end stopped and often a single line contains what seems like more than one thought (I have no doubt this is purposeful, but I do not have a good explanation as to why). I found it hard to enter this poem and could not get a grasp on its narrative, which left its importance a greater mystery (are we talking about the last tree that stands, its shadow will remain forever a stain on the existence of its takers?). That said, “For A Coming Extinction” is a strong piece, but still not easily understood – there seems to be an agenda here – humans are a selfish breed, whose acts in aiding the extinction of other species are somehow sacrificial. The problem is I feel like I’ve got this all wrong.

“This Morning in Costa Rica” seems to be a moment of realization in its entirety, recognizing the bats’ selfless act as poem-like, a giving to the few as an act of community health. I felt like this poem touched an important nerve in the body of nature writing.

James Wright’s selections were of a more accessible nature. All of which, however, seem to demonstrate the narrator’s coming closer to nature by observing some small act of wildness.

Sheryl St. Germain’s poetry carried a greater accessibility, I felt, than most. “Big Fish” speaks of those “that have once tasted the hook” and have grown from their failures into wiser swimmers, who know how better to navigate their world, turning their mistakes into learning, their learning into life. This poem and others make use of the natural world to explore aspects of the human condition that cannot be summed up in an easy manner. The narrator in “Why I Went into the Jungle” does so to immerse herself in something that she doesn’t fully understand, something dangerous and dark – an act that she hopes (or rather deeply believes) will make her more knowledgeable in doing. In short, sometimes to truly learn something is to take a risk, let go of your fear and jump in head first.

My readings here may be somewhat flawed, but the risk, I hope, will be worth the reward. It is often through question and criticism that we learn to best appreciate something. By criticizing a few of these poems, I am really only criticizing my reading. I like to think that I’ve evolved my critical reading skills enough, at the very least, to understand that I’m not going to “get” or appreciate everything. Just as the folk singer doesn’t necessarily appreciate heavy metal, every poet isn’t going to appreciate every other poet’s work. There is a point in a writer’s life where they must recognize their own shortcomings before they can work to overcome them. Like the flower that, only through its lack of nutrients, discovers the things it needs (soil, sun and water) to reach its true potential. I am not against enjoying the poems I initially did not. Hopefully, with a little help, I will learn to. And since blossom ends so many poems, let’s just say I am open to the notion of the sky.

Mary Oliver Response

“Of course nothing stops the cold, black, curved blade from hooking forward – of course loss is the great lesson.”

- Poppies

The Wild
(a short unrevised poem in reaction to Blue Iris)

It’s amazing how much of yourself
can be found curled up, sound asleep
in the warm sheets of a small paperback book.
I woke up face down in the margin,
a trickling stream of drool running like a sentence
into a paragraph on the ocean…
or a poem about Sea Leaves.
When I opened my eyes I wasn’t sure
if I’d actually been asleep,
dreaming about being on vacation
in the Appalachian Highlands;
or if I was hard at work,
grinding my teeth into the book’s spine
like a curious raccoon on an empty stomach
looking for a camper’s scraps
hungry for whatever comes next.

Mary Oliver was “at the bravo age of sixteen” when she spent a summer embracing nature near the river in Clarion, Pennsylvania, less than thirty minutes southeast of my high school, down route 322, past the buffalo, standing still as a mountain at Hirsh’s Meats in Kossuth. In her short essay, A Blessing, Oliver tells us about living in a tent, hiking, eating potatoes, discovering strip mines, listening to owls and learning to write. Her essays, much like her poems, are as much about exploring what it means to be alive as they are about exploring the natural world. The plants and flowers she describes are a frame or a lens with which she often finds a deeper understanding of her relationship with the environment (both immediate and existential). Her poem Touch-me-nots reads:

And then I too, knowing the world,
ran through the jewel weeds
as someone, unknown and not smiling,
came down the path to where

the trap lay, stamped upon
by my very own feet,
and while I ran, the touch-me-nots
nodded affirmatively

their golden bodies –
I could not help but touch them –
and dashed forth their sleek pods,
oh, life flew around us, everywhere.

As much as I appreciate this aspect of her work, I am even more fond of the personal memories she reminded me of when she brought up this place, near Clarion, so close to one of my homes.

I was fourteen, maybe the carnival age, and I was probably a clown riding horseback with a girl at Deer Meadow Campground in Cook Forest, Pennsylvania where my parents, brothers and my sister with some family friends pitched tents in the summer of 1988. We ate camper pies cooked over the metal ring of a fire pit, listened to a David Crosby look-a-like sing American Pie, went trout fishing in a nearby stream, and I even remember drawing a comic book inspired by the Punisher (what the significance of that is, I don’t really know). I do know that there was a girl in the campground arcade who asked me to go horseback riding, and I went. And probably for the first time in my life, I didn’t mind leaving a video game behind.

It was 1988 and I was barely born, but I was absolutely alive. We had a wonderful time at Deer Meadow campground – water, electric and cable (only 27 dollars today). I don’t remember seeing any skunks, certainly none sleeping in my cot. But I do remember riding that horse, watching a girl from Emporium ride in front of me. And I remember the song The Flame playing on the radio that summer, as corny as it was, as corny as I was, and as close to nature as I will probably ever be. Thank you, Mary Oliver, thank you.

Belonging: Place 3

It’s almost dusk again at the wildlife preserve. I was lucky enough to be alone with the ducks for a few minutes (took some pictures with my phone) but soon after the cars began showing up and the kids jumped out yelling “one of the ducks is pooping! Look, Mom, it’s pooping!” which, admittedly, is funny to me. Although, for a few moments while those birds waddled up to me, just inches away, I felt some small connection, or maybe just a short peacefulness – something I suppose most nature writers (which I am not, nor will I probably ever be) are attuned to, something that I don’t have a name for. Serenity maybe? That’s almost too sentimental, too gushy. For a minute I actually felt like I belong here.

Occasionally I feel that way when I write a poem. And I mean occasionally, as though I typically don’t “belong here” – writing poetry at all. It’s such an academic, such an intellectual thing to do, and I’m just a football watching, beer drinking, working-class moron with aspirations of immortality. Yes, I want to live forever. The only way I can figure to accomplish that is to write a book, to remind people that I was around, and that I had something to say. But now I wonder if that’s really it, having something to say? There’s got to be more than that. I heard somewhere recently that writing poetry is really about giving a name to something that didn’t already have one, describing something that exists but cannot otherwise be described. Maybe that’s what I want to do. Maybe, in my sub-intellectual skull, I want to discover something and share it with you.

Anyway, you’ve gone to Utah with your mom and I’m here alone, sitting on my favorite bench, the one chained to a white oak tree. The concert of honks and quacks that typically accompanies the sound of the fountain is at an unusual intermission when I hear, coming from behind me, a thump. On further investigation, I realize there’s a fruit tree at the edge of the woods. I’m guessing by the look of the rotting balls scattered around the ground beneath that’s it’s a nectarine tree (maybe peach, but I can’t make out any fuzz on the fruit). There’s a gray squirrel performing some arboreal gymnastics, kicking around produce in the process. Thump….thump….thump….every several seconds or so. And then it stops. I’m looking up at the squirrel who’s stopped leaping, flipping and spinning around the branches. He is staring down at me, his hands are just below his chin, and it looks like he’s tapping his fingers together, the way people do when they’ve been up to something and aren’t afraid to let you know. I can almost see the sinister grin on his face. And just like that, he takes off, catapulting himself to another tree completely before disappearing among the leaves. But in that moment, that short staring contest, I felt it again, that feeling of belonging….like a heart beat, thumping. Maybe that’s what I’ll call it, this momentary feeling of being “in-touch” with nature, a heartbeat, a thumping. Then again, maybe it doesn’t need a name. Maybe what I really want is the discovering, not the discovery. Maybe what I want to share with you is not the end, not the name, not the finding, but the journey, the way there. Maybe what I want to share with you is the…

Eden Hall Farm: Response 5

Ten years ago I could run two miles in twelve minutes. I could muscle out around seventy-five push ups and just shy of a hundred sit ups. I was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, only a couple years removed from basic training. I played softball, flag football, ultimate Frisbee…I was in peak physical condition. In fact, only two years before, I’d out run the German Polizei. But that’s another story for another time. I’m writing this because the other day at Eden Hall Farm, moving several tons of dirt around, shoveling it in and out of wheelbarrows, I felt my age and lack of conditioning.

Not that the work was all that difficult, or that I got winded, but I felt it, more so than I’ve felt in a while. Probably the last time I worked like that was helping my brother dig post holes for the deck he built. We used a mechanized auger, which you would think might make the job easier…I almost think we should have dug them by hand. Regardless, that’s some real work, physical labor. It puts into perspective the kind of thing I do for a living…sit at a desk, shuffle around a carpeted (occasionally tiled) floor, pushing buttons on this thing and that, scratching reminders on sticky notes. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I get to crawl under a desk and unplug something, that gets the blood pumping. We get a lot of paper deliveries too. Moving those boxes around can work out the muscles, but at thirty-five (which includes at least fifteen years of fairly heavy beer drinking), my back is starting to give way to my front. The point, ultimately is, what is work? And I don’t mean the basic answer…doing something every day to pay the bills, that’s easy. My Uncle Lefty (owned a bowling alley, Suburban Lanes in Fairview, PA – I worked there as a pin boy for a couple weeks) had a sheet of paper pinned up in his office with this little saying (you’ve probably heard it before):

“We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much for so long with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.”

The work I’m doing now, this creative writing, poetry, non-fiction, it’s nonetheless strenuous. I can feel myself being exercised (possibly even exorcised) as I continue to write. I’m trying not to take the same approach to a piece that I’ve taken before. I’m trying to enter the point of my work from somewhere outside its frame. Indeed, I am working, and that’s what a true writer does.

I’m realizing now that this is something I’ve been struggling over for sometime, wondering why I’m drawn to this, why I keep doing it, why sometimes, I have no choice but to put something down, but also, why quite often, I don’t. It’s easy to come up with reasons why we write: emotions balled up inside your head with little to no other outlet, opinions that you feel other people should, at the very least hear, something you thought of that made you laugh out loud, simply making a connection with somebody else. All of these are reasons to stop what you’re doing or take a few minutes in the evening to sit down and jot out a few lines of verse or a paragraph or two of prose…just like exercise. But, if you don’t do it, and do it consistently, you start to get stale, start to get stiff, start to get sore. The words get tougher to find. The dirt gets heavier. The wheelbarrow tilts. And you start to count the years until it falls.