Ecopoetry handout #1

Eco-poetry & Ecological Awareness: Raising ecological consciousness through eco-sensitive poetry

This handout is for Monday, Oct. 8th. Hope you enjoy the reading, it's a noticeable deviation from the poetry we've been reading from Indie authors. :)

What is Eco poetry? Eco-poetry can inspire a broad awareness for our environment by presenting different ecological perspectives. Eco-poetry is often marked by an appreciation for nature as self-regulating cyclic systems, separate from nature and environmental poetry. Eco-poetry is clear and somewhat minimalist; rather than experimenting with visual and textual design, eco-poets dedicate their efforts to the aesthetic flow of their work by creating a fluid message through organized stanzas.

Becoming a Redwood BY DANA GIOIA Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds start up again. The crickets, the invisible toad who claims that change is possible, And all the other life too small to name. First one, then another, until innumerable they merge into the single voice of a summer hill. Yes, it’s hard to stand still, hour after hour, fixed as a fencepost, hearing the steers snort in the dark pasture, smelling the manure. And paralyzed by the mystery of how a stone can bear to be a stone, the pain the grass endures breaking through the earth’s crust. Unimaginable the redwoods on the far hill, rooted for centuries, the living wood grown tall and thickened with a hundred thousand days of  light. The old windmill creaks in perfect time to the wind shaking the miles of pasture grass, and the last farmhouse light goes off. Something moves nearby. Coyotes hunt these hills and packs of feral dogs. But standing here at night accepts all that. You are your own pale shadow in the quarter moon, moving more slowly than the crippled stars, part of the moonlight as the moonlight falls, Part of the grass that answers the wind, part of the midnight’s watchfulness that knows there is no silence but when danger comes.

Piute Creek BY GARY SNYDER One granite ridge A tree, would be enough Or even a rock, a small creek, A bark shred in a pool. Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted Tough trees crammed In thin stone fractures A huge moon on it all, is too much. The mind wanders. A million Summers, night air still and the rocks Warm. Sky over endless mountains. All the junk that goes with being human Drops away, hard rock wavers Even the heavy present seems to fail This bubble of a heart. Words and books Like a small creek off a high ledge Gone in the dry air. A clear, attentive mind Has no meaning but that Which sees is truly seen. No one loves rock, yet we are here. Night chills. A flick In the moonlight Slips into Juniper shadow: Back there unseen Cold proud eyes Of Cougar or Coyote Watch me rise and go.

 

Totems BY LYNNE ELSON As if retrieving pebbles              Filmed with shine from the curbed spine of a beach,               waves lisping our faces stung with salt, our               talk fresh with discovery, we carried               each season to our door: catskins, first snow               of blossom, the flotsam of our journeys,               sweet chestnuts’ porcupines, pectorals of              cones. Turning varied textures in our hands,              fleetingly touched by their strangeness, subtly              changed. Bringing the outside in, so the house              swam in its wider rhythms, the flow of              storm,-clouds, hills, moraine, the shuttling arc              of the sun.

Of Grass BY GEORGE SZIRTES It was the shade of grass—no, something greener We touched on shortly before sleep, so soft, so bright, No metaphor could touch or scumble it, I cannot speak it though my mouth is green. In a dream following a cobra nestled Against my chest- we wrestled as in play Then I lay poisoned in the open air, I was nothing and the grass was nothing, Only my fingers were aware and moved In search of feeling, but they found Nothing except a tongue and it was yours Speaking of something in a foreign language And I being your tongue’s interpreter Understood the word you spoke as grass.