Contemporary Nature Poetry

W.S. Merwin's "The Last One" was one of the poems that jumped out at me most.  First off it was longer and felt more like a piece of prose, a piece of flash fiction.  Merwin does not give a concrete description of who 'they' represents.  He uses repetition by starting several of his lines with 'they,' which I assume is the people cutting down the trees.  I had some trouble with this poem.  I saw 'they' as representations of people from the very beginning.  "Well they'd made up their minds to be everywhere because why not.  Everywhere was theirs because they thought so."  The way people are clear cutting and moving in on the woodlands and forests, today, shows that they believe that anywhere and everywhere is their own property.  They only care about how the trees can benefit them; "some to have some for burning."  They do not care how they are effecting the environment, the world.

At the end of the third stanza, nature seems to be plotting against man.  The shadows, or what I saw as the souls, of the night and the tree have taken enough of a beating, and 'Now' want to fight back.  Man cuts down the last standing tree, but the tree's soul is still there imprinted on the land and water.  They cut the ground, laid boards, and even set fire to try to rid the area of the shadow.  Through all of their attempts, they only fuel the fire as the shadow continues to grow.  Until it finally begins to cut down the men and steal their souls.  "The ones that could see and stood still, it swallowed their shadows, then it swallowed them too and they vanished."  The 'lucky ones' got away and went away as far as possible.  They were lucky because their souls were still intact, but also because they had maybe learned a valuable lesson.

I think Merwin is successful, because he touches on a serious problem in an interesting and mysterious way.  The forest is often seen as a magical place, so Merwin plays off this idea and gives the tree the power to fight back.  In the end, whether I'm right or wrong, his poem has pushed me and challenged me to think about the human relationship versus the non-human world.

"In the Garden of Eden" was another poem that stood out to me.  She starts out describing the vultures comparing them to gods, as if they represent much more than just birds.  The last two stanzas change the tone of the poem.  This is where I realize that this is not just about vultures but about something more.  "And they were happy.  They could not imagine, what they would become."  As if the vultures, which could represent us, were once innocent and a part of the land in Eden.  But people have changed.  Over time they have become unsatisfied and gluttonous, something they would have never seen themselves as.

I like the nature poems that are detailed and descriptive.  Short, but strong, metaphors weaved in throughout that jump out and hit the reader causing them to slow back down and think.  In the end, after what is disguised as something about pretty flowers or birds becomes something much deeper and relatable.  There are several layers, and the reader is forced to go back and reread, trying to discover the real meaning, the truth.