THE LANGUAGE HABITAT and  Mary Oliver’s sunflowers

Poets have always investigated the relationship between language and the natural world and the place of humans within it. The term ‘language habitat’ comes from James Engelhardt’s Ecopoetry Manifesto, and it leads me into the question of what is ‘eco’poetry, or what might have in earlier times been called ‘Nature’ Poetry. I like the phrase ‘ language habitat’ and I’m hoping my investigations will lead me to discover some good poetry, but from the very beginning, I’m not sure that I like the idea of classifying good poetry according to themes.

One analysis has ecopoetry growing out of post-modern ecocriticism, but it makes more sense to me to ask what is the relationship between poetry and the natural world; this is a question that has led to intense discussion amongst scholars from many different fields or disciplines  (that is to say not just poets).

For example, in The Song of the Earth, Jonathan Bate says:

Ecopoetry is not a description of dwelling with the earth, not a disengaged dwelling with the earth  [note that his reference to dwelling here comes from a German philosopher Heidegger who discussed the relationship between nature and poetry at length in his work], not a disengaged thinking about it, but an experiencing of it. By poetry here I mean poiesis,[or]  making. . . Ecopoetry is not synonymous with poetry that is pragmatically green: a manifesto for ecological correctness will not be poetic because it is bound to be instrumental, to address questions of doing rather than to ‘present’ the experience.

 [page 42]

This blog could very easily become academic, but I will try to steer away from that path. I like this statement because its focus is on the essential element of all poetry - language. Poeisis (or making) is a Greek term, and I hope readers will be happy to stay with me while I extract a little more from Bate’s detailed critique. On page 75 he writes:

’. . . the rhythmic, syntactic and linguistic intensifications that are characteristic of verse writing frequently give a peculiar force to the poiesis: it could be that poiesis in the sense of verse making language’s most direct path of return to the oikos, the place of dwelling [or experiencing] because metre itself – a quiet but persistent music, a recurring cycle, a heartbeat – is an answering to nature’s own rhythms, an echoing of the song of the earth itself.

The Song of the Earth is a work of literary criticism and as the preface says, it is ‘a book about why poetry continues to matter as we enter a new millennium that will be ruled by technology’; put another way, it is about ‘modern Western man’s alienation from nature.’

After a detailed study of the Romantic poets, Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats in particular, as well as some less well-known ones Bates remains positive about the place of poetry in the millennium we have now entered [he wrote the book in 2000] and the last chapter of the book poses the critical question, what are poets for?

 

Jay Parini, in his recent book Why Poetry Matters points out that the world of the poet is largely an interior one. Poetry works in quiet ways he explains, shaping the interior space of its readers, adding a range of subtlety to their thoughts – and I particularly like this last claim, complicating their world for them. Consequently, whereas Shelley claimed that poets are the legislators of the world, Parini prefers  George Oppen’s view that that poets are  legislators of the unacknowledged world [There was a review of Parini’s book in the Australian Weekend Review July 26/27, and there’s more about Parini and Oppen on the web].

 

Parini’s reminded me of my favourite definitions of landscape, which comes from the essay Landscape and Narrative written by Barry Lopez:

I think of two landscapes – one outside and one within. The external landscape is the one we see — not only the line and color of the land and its shading at different times of the day, but also its plants and animals in season, its weather, its geology, the record of its climate and evolution. . .

One learns a landscape finally not by knowing the name or identity of everything in it, but by perceiving the relationships in it — like that between the sparrow and the twig. The difference between the relationships and the elements is the same as that between written history and a catalogue of events.

The second landscape I think of is an interior one, a kind of projection within a person of part of the exterior landscape.

 

Whether I  am a poet or not, I tend to create interior landscapes for myself, but I am keen to move away from definitions that suit my current kind of thinking now, because I need to do some hard thinking about what I can make my poetry do. 

What will I say to people when they say, yes that’s wonderful, but still, what does poetry do? Really?  How will I defend myself against those people who take W.H. Auden’s line from his elegy on the death of W. B. Yeats, Poetry makes nothing happen’ out of context?

(Auden wrote his elegy after Yeats’ death in January 1939, as the world was preparing itself for war…)

 

Here are few possible reponses:

While poetry may be primarily interior language, poets do have a responsibility and even a power to raise questions and to unsettle established ideas so that they may be re-examined.

I am not ready to write my Poetry Manifesto yet, but I believe that poetry help us to examine our environment and promote an ethical relationship with it.

 

We can no longer simply entertain the romantic idea of the natural world as a place of constantly renewable resources and many wonders and while one purpose of poetry is to open negotiations between language and landscape, it is worth continuing reading and writing, keeping in mind though the matter of Mary Oliver’s sunflowers:

 

‘Writing is neither vibrant life nor docile artifact but a text that would put all its money on the hope of suggestion. Come with me into the field of sunflowers is a better line than anything you will find here, and the sunflowers themselves are more wonderful than any words about them.

 

I came across this quote in a talk, What is Ecopoetry?’ by Kate Rigby, posted on http://collectedworks-poetryideas.blogspot.com . This website is worth a visit and even better, follow up with a visit to Kris Hemmensley’s the bookshop Collected Works -undoubtedly the best bookshop of all.

 

If sometimes, in some more of Mary Oliver’s words, I can make poetry that ‘turn[s] our gaze to the world beyond the page’ I will be pleased, and I’ll certainly continue to be inspired by those who have made me turn my gaze to that world beyond.