Today
is Earth Day. It seemed like a very big deal when it was introduced in 1970 when the Environmental Movement as we know it
was still in its relative infancy having grown out the earlier Conservation Movement that emphasized
the husbanding of natural resources
for human use. It seems in those early
years when hundreds of thousands responded to calls to march or participate in
some way that real change was possible.
And,
of course, much was accomplished—the EPA
and increased regulation of
pollution, the hands-on movement to re-cycle
and re-use, the on-going
involvement of children which
critics charge has become a virtual
secular religion. But despite it
all, the Planet is in more desperate
shape today than it was then. The Cassandra warnings about climate change have come true in
spades, faster than anyone really expected.
Yet resistance to real change
to address the root causes has never been fiercer—or more successful—as it is
fueled by billionaire exploiters and
exploited by rabid right wing movements. If liberals
love the Planet, conservatives MUST
attack it wrapping themselves in an ideology of unfettered capitalism on one hand and apocalyptic
Evangelical claims that the End of
Days is a hand so humans can and should squeeze every ounce of value from
the Earth that will be thrown away anyway on the other.
Meanwhile
the Earth Day celebration has been tamed,
made nice, worth all of five minutes mention on the Nightly News and some grade
school art projects. We are told
that “we must not make it political, because everyone loves the Earth”—a lie on
the face of it.
Ecopoetry is a broad
movement in response to that too easy complacency
and the cooption of environmentalism
into a marketing tool even by the
most evil planet raping corporations.
It grew from an instinctive reaction of poets around the world, whose
sensitivity to the world in which they live make them the perfect canaries in the coal mine and is now a
more or less concerted literary and political—in its broadest and most
significant meaning—undertaking. It even
has its organizations, publications, and web sites.
One
of the most important of these is eco-poetry.org which defines its mission
“to inspire action to save the habitable Earth for the future of life and art
including poetry. There is no planet B.”
Here are some of the poets found on their site. Plus a final interloper.
Young Ginsberg Howled. |
The
ecopoets acknowledge forerunner of world class significance including Americans Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman,
Langston Hughes, and Wendell Berry plus
world wordsmiths Rumi, Pablo Neruda,
and Ernesto Cardinal. It should come as no surprise that the
great Beat rebel Allen Ginsberg is
among them. In fact almost no poet since
has summed up with greater passion
the outrage of what is being done to
our Planet and only home. Take this stunning excerpt from one of his
most famous poems:
from Howl
….Moloch whose
love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and
banks! Moloch whose poverty is the
specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a
cloud of sexless hydrogen! ….
Moloch who
frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon!
Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out
of the sky!....
Moloch! Moloch!
Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind
capitals! demonic industries! spectral
nations! invincible madhouses! Granite
cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their
backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons!
lifting the city to Heaven which exists
and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens!
hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!
Dreams!
adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs!
over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood!...
—Allen
Ginsberg
Robert Bly, more than Iron Man. |
An
elder and godfather to the movement is Robert
Bly born in 1928 and still active.
He is best known as the founder of the sometimes controversial spiritual mythopoetic men’s movement
which tried to re-connect masculinity with
nature and re-balance the male role
in balance with the sacred feminine. Bly, through his publications, seminars,
and tribal gatherings has nurtured
new generations of ecopoets.
Call and Answer
Tell me why it
is we don’t lift our voices these days
And cry over
what is happening. Have you noticed
The plans are
made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?
I say to myself:
“Go on, cry. What’s the sense
Of being an
adult and having no voice? Cry out!
See who will
answer! This is Call and Answer!”
We will have to
call especially loud to reach
Our angels, who
are hard of hearing; they are hiding
In the jugs of
silence filled during our wars.
Have we agreed
to so many wars that we can’t
Escape from
silence? If we don’t lift our voices, we allow
Others (who are
ourselves) to rob the house.
How come we’ve
listened to the great criers—Neruda,
Akhmatova,
Thoreau, Frederick Douglass—and now
We’re silent as
sparrows in the little bushes?
Some masters say
our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in
the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now!
Soon Sunday night will come,
—Robert
Bly
Juanita Torrence-Thompson. |
Juanita
Torrence-Thompson is
a Massachusetts born poet and editor
who has flown just under wide public readership despite seven collections of
poetry, including her latest Talking
With Stanley Kunitz and numerous awards and honors in the poetry community. She is the influential editor and publisher of Möbius,
The Poetry Magazine which has
published many of the leading poets of this generation. Her poetry and prose has appeared in 12
anthologies and dozens of magazines around and has been featured at hundreds of
readings in the U.S., South Africa, Singapore, Switzerland, and Canada.
She is a former adjunct Professor at the
College of New Rochelle. In this
poem she looks at one beloved place,
its transformation by unthinking privileged sprawl through the eyes of a
long time resident.
Transition in
New Hampshire
Inspired by a
long-time New Hampshire Resident
They snapped up
10 acres here
5 acres there
built their 2nd
or 3rd home
bought out the
lake front
fished until the
fish nearly
disappeared
No one fishes
now
Few swim or go
boating
Hunting is dead
Snowboarders
wait for snow
But there is
only
rain,
rain,
rain
At a nearby
restaurant,
A local drinks
her coffee with city water
which tastes
like chlorinated coffee
She runs home to
her pristine well
And makes decent
coffee
Then sits on her
front porch
Admiring her
tall oak tree
Purple pansies,
pink hibiscus
And a scampering
raccoon
Camped on her
conservation land
—Juanita
Torrence-Thompson
Now
for the interloper, one of the most justifiably obscure poets in North
America and proprietor of a penny ante blog.
Raining
Earthworms
Bergen, Norway,
April 18, 2015 (UPI)
A skier in the
snow fields above Bergen
found earthworms lying atop
meter and a half snow pack.
When he scooped
them into his curious hands
they began wriggling on the warmth
of his flesh.
Curious.
Ah, but the
sages of science wave their hands
and declare no mystery here!
The worms were
flushed to the surface somewhere
by heavy rains—
you know the kinds,
like those that leave them writhing
on your sidewalk after that
June gullywasher—
and swept high
up, up, up,
to where the jet
streams wail
by some odd
updraft or
tornadic winds.
Who knows how far they were pushed
in that icy gale
sleeping as they would
in the
frozen earth of a long
winter.
We’ve seen this kind of thing before
raining fish in
Singapore and India,
frogs in Hungary,
and crawdads in
Arkansas, wasn’t it.
Don’t be alarmed,
nothing to see here.
move along.
And yet…
I say they were the delayed and
misdirected
eleventh plague of
Egypt.
Or maybe not misdirected at all…
—Patrick Murfin
Some of these poems were taken from http://www.Eco-Poetry.org without copyright permission. They are at www.Eco-Poetry.org with copyright notices. Though we all care about the EARTH,there should have at least have been an acknowledgement of www.Eco-Poetry.org which has these poems on its e-anthology since 2010 with copyright notices by authors and which took thousands of volunteer hours in the cause to build. Please go to www.Eco-Poetry to read more good ecological poetry up since 2010 and growing.
ReplyDeleteYour very fine site was not only acknowledged it was linked to in the fifth paragraph of the introductory essay. Apologize for any copyright acknowledgement errors.
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