Tell me what the poets are doing

June is a month for poets, a sun-soaked month of roses and easy rhymes. Soon, moon, croon and all that jazz. It is easy to look at the lush growth and beauty all around and turn to nature poems.

I read an article recently about the differences between nature poetry and eco poetry. Eco poetry seems to be a new trend, speaking directly into anxieties about climate change and changing landscapes and pushing past traditional nature poetry’s simpler observations of beauty. I’m not sure if this is a useful or even an accurate division but everything is eco these days. I wonder if this trend is merely a new way of framing an older impulse. Some of Thomas Hardy’s writing in the nineteenth century would fit very comfortably under this eco poetry umbrella. Or, to change the metaphor, there are deep roots below the surface.

Snyder’s wild poems

In the mid-twentieth century the American poet Gary Snyder worked as both a lumberjack and a firewatcher in the Californian forests. He saw the strength and vulnerability of the natural world, and his poems demonstrate an acute awareness of our human connection and responsibility. About how he saw poetry, he wrote: “I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.”

A bit like in the Psalms. More deep roots.

Echoes

Give ear, o Lord, to my prayer. Listen to my cry of supplication. In the day of trouble, I will call on you. In trouble and in confession, the Psalmist, too, looked at the vulnerable world and turned to verse. The Psalms are heavy with references to nature, as well. The heavens are telling the glory of God. Or the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it. Or the voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl.

The psalmist sees nature as the work of the Creator and, as such, revealing of God’s character. We can look at mountains and oceans, the lives of plants and animals, and see beauty, glory, strength, majesty, faithfulness. The Psalmist encourages us to understand who God is by seeing what God has done. There is a danger if we get swept up in this shape of thinking, though, because as well as being beautiful, nature can be violent and arbitrary, indifferent to the human condition. It isn’t all a beautiful June afternoon. I think Snyder’s two-handed approach is wise here, too, as holding human experiences together with our perception of natural beauty, we might see God’s work more clearly.

So, what is it that the poets are doing, setting these thoughts down in crafted language? Writing prayers, maybe. Reaching for Truth. Listening to Life in the rhythms around them.

The Psalmist sings Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people.

And I hear Gary Snyder’s echo from his poem “For the Children,”
in the next century,
or the one beyond that
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it