Small musings on environmental poetry
There's a big debate about nature poetry in modern environmentalist thought--about whether or not it retains any sense of validity because of the idealistic and almost pastoral (even though that's also a different genre) sense of nature. I was reading a short essay by James Engelhart who claims that ecopoetry (supposedly meant to be the sort of corrected form of nature poetry) should be more like science than the pastoral. We should, he says, commit to the irrefutable truth that nature is non-human. We should perceive as the Other and through that contrast, learn what it means to really be human.
It's an interesting essay, and not the first I've read on the topic. Plenty of people have points to make about the personification or humanization about specific parts of nature (ie. waves do not dance, it is a purely human characteristic). It's true, trying to relate to Nature, such an infinite and all-powerful thing, seems almost wrong.