So much of this discussion of "nature poetry" seems - implicitly or
otherwise - to place nature outside us, as if human beings were
supernatural - relating to nature kindly or otherwise like gods - rather
than seeing as as neither in it or above or below it, but as part of it -
it seems difficult to disentangle much of the discussion from gender.
Nature as She is inspires "desire and fear" as JK said, as Woman in her
chthonic morass has traditionally been the Natural counterpoint to male
striving Beyond into Transcendence (if you believe Paglia). Might this
ancient subtext have something to do with the infantilising of
environmental issues?
I resist the suggestion that to imagine ourselves as part of nature is to
anthromorphise - the opposite, perhaps? Our bodies and minds are
ecologies, connected intimately - physically and psychically - to the
larger ecologies of our planet and the ecologies of other living beings.
How then to write "about" nature? How then not to see that it "matters"?
Cheers
Alison
Home Page: http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bronte/338
Masthead online: http://www.geocities.com/soho/studios/5662
PO Box 186
Newport VIC 3015
Australia
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