Response 7: Poets and the Natural World

Of the various poems we read for this week’s class, each poet—Rogers, Wright, Merwin, Guevara, Clifton, St. Germain and Kutchins—approached writing nature poems in their own unique way:

1. Pattiann Rogers, in “The Hummingbird: A Seduction,” used nature to tackle the most cliché topic for poetry: love. Rogers presents love in a fresh way by comparing seduction of a hummingbird to human seduction. Rather than express the love a woman feels for a man in terms of human desire, in the third stanza she describes physical intimacy as a mid-air dance performed by hummingbirds: “And if I saw your sweeping and sucking/Performance of swirling egg and semen in the air/The weaving, twisting vision of red petal/And nectar and soaring rump, the rush of your wing/In its grand confusion of arcing and splitting/Created completely out of nothing just for me…”

2. Overall, James Wright writes about the relationship between man and nature and the joy animals, plants and insects bring to humans. His characters express their pleasure during encounters with horses, milkweed and crickets and they caress a horse, release seeds from milkweed pods, and listen to the clear sounds of crickets.

3. W.S. Merwin takes a much different approach in that he includes more of an environmental theme. In “The Last One” he addresses the effect logging has on tree populations and nature’s stubbornness to persevere and fight back. Although he does not name his main subjects, man and tree, Merwin includes details such as “leaves,” “cutting,” “shadow” and “machines” to help the reader understand the poem. One characteristic that could have caused great confusion, however, is Merwin’s repetitive use of “they” which refers to both man and tree. Yet because of the specific details he attaches to each “they,” Merwin eliminates confusion. For instance, in the first stanza, “They with two leaves they whom the birds despise,” the reader knows that “they” pertains to trees because of the words “leaves” and “birds.” In the second stanza, “Well they cut everything because why not,” “they” refers to humans because humans have the ability to cut trees. Overall, Merwin creates ambiguity by refusing to name his subjects, but this choice makes the poem stronger because he blurs the line between man and tree as if to say there is no distinction between mankind and the natural world, and thus trees are as important as humans.

4. Like Merwin, Maurice Guevara does not always directly name his subject, vampire bats. Instead, he requires the reader to rely on details such as “blood vomit,” “upside down,” and “fly.” But Guevera does one thing that Merwin does not; he names the bats in the second stanza, “a craziness the bats fly from.”

5. Whereas the previous poets focused on the relationship between humans and animals, Lucille Clifton incorporates dialect into her poem, “defending my tongue,” to present a strong sense of place. She combines language with landscape descriptions in a way that her speaker identifies home with language.

6. Sheryl St. Germain often includes nature to explore human emotions such as desire and pain. Many of the poems in the selection we read use the sun, jungle, deer and other parts of nature to describe the speaker’s relationships, wants and needs.

7. The last author I want to mention is Laurie Kutchins who, in my opinion, approaches nature writing in the most appealing way. Like the other poets, she writes about the relationship between humans and nature. However, she avoids writing about love and emotions. Instead, in her poem, “Walk in Tick Season,” she focuses on one of the most basic connections a person can have with the natural world: a tick making contact with a human. Obviously, not a very pleasing topic. If someone were to ask me to read a poem about a tick crawling on human skin, I would turn down the offer because who wants to read about ticks. Yet, Kutchins is able to take a disgusting incident and make it not only interesting but beautiful.

One way in which Kutchins transforms a tick feasting on human blood into an act of beauty is to avoid naming the tick. With the exception of the first line, she does not call the tick a tick but rather “she.” As a result, she lessens the effect the word “tick” has on the reader allowing her audience to identify with a female character. The author also maintains a metaphor of the human body as a landscape full of tunnels (trousers), ravines (ears) and shaded areas (underarms), thus creating an image of a stunning but strange landscape which seems to be from another world. By describing the tick’s presence on flesh as a female taking a long stroll, Kutchins enables the reader to forget about the tick. Because of this, I am able to concentrate on the relationship between an individual and nature. And in this poem, that relationship is based on the idea that man can affect nature in a positive way by unintentionally helping even the smallest creature survive.