The nature of nature writing
What is revealed
Dear friends,
“Praise here all fabulous unwritten” is one of the lines in Kimberly Blaeser’s “my journal records the vestiture of doppelgängers”, which we released this week as the first episode in the new season of Poetry Unbound.
The magnificent irony! To use writing to praise all that is not written. “Nature writing” is a broad term that sometimes implies it’s doing just one thing — writing about what’s natural in front of us. But what is natural? It’s physics, for one (our English word comes from the Greek word “phúsis” meaning “origin/nature”.
But nature is not just “red squirrel swimming (yes! swimming) across a small channel”; nature is also the person writing the poem, the person who is part of a species who derive pleasure and message and purpose in observing. Nature is not always pleasant and some things in nature (think of philosophical discussions about whether it is natural for people to fight) deserve to be queried and undone. Nature, then, is worth observing, and — where we think we can or even if not, where we want to — attempts at modification may be worthy.
Whose nature should be modified? Well … me. Maybe you? Maybe us. Yes yes. You know what I mean.
“We do not tell stories as they are, we tell them as we are” is a line Anaïs Nin ascribed to the Talmud (although famously there is no such line in the written Talmud). And this truism can be apportioned to nature too: We do not tell nature as it is, we tell it as we are. This, then, leads me to the question of what nature is revealed in any nature writing.
Kimberly Blaeser’s poem reveals a powerful desire to notice and deepen the connectivity between observer and observed, poet and “blissful beaver /devouring each water lily”. Twenty-five years ago, after a grief, I couldn’t stop looking at birds. Crows, magpies, rooks, ravens. They circled above the hillside where my now-dead friend had lived. Looking at them one afternoon as I walked away from visiting his mother, I felt a physical lurch in my chest. I, too, wanted to fly, to be above — if only for a few minutes — all that was weighing me down.
Another time, in another place, I was giving a retreat. I was facing the group, and behind me was a wall of glass showing a wooded area. Something happened, and the response was not noise but a deeper silence. In the trees through the window — maybe only 15 feet away — was a red-shouldered hawk: beautiful and light and still. It stayed for five full minutes, and so did we. The precision of attention was met by a strange combination of alertness and rest. We had gathered for a retreat; it was the hawk that brought us there.
So this week’s question: In the nature writing that you have turned to, what has been revealed to you? About the observer/writer, about the world, about you?
I’ll see you in the comments, friends.
PS: As well as being a renowned poet, Kimberly Blaeser is the executive director of Indigenous Nations Poets, a community committed to raising the visibility of Native writers that was founded in 2020. This work is important and fantastic.
The Latest from Poetry Unbound
Episode 1: Kimberly Blaeser — my journal records the vestiture of doppelgängers
Episode 2: W.S. Merwin — For The Anniversary of My Death
You can also listen on Spotify, poetryunbound.org, or wherever podcasts are found.
Poetry in the World
A list of my events: Online and in the US (Saint Paul, MN; Berkeley and Palo Alto, CA; Washington, DC; Manhattan, Kingston, and Rhinebeck, NY; Orlando, FL; Notre Dame, IN) and the UK (Iona, Scotland)
January 18, Saint Paul, Minnesota
Join me at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, where we’ll be reading, writing, and discussing poems together beginning at 3 p.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
January 29, Berkeley, California
I’ll be presenting an evening keynote at The Center for Faith and Justice. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
January 31, Palo Alto, California
I’m leading a morning retreat at All Saints Episcopal Church, beginning at 10 a.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
February 2, Washington, District of Columbia, and Online
Join poet Marilyn Nelson and me for a conversation at the Washington National Cathedral at 7 p.m ET. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
I’m directing an evening workshop on lyric address through Poets House, beginning at 6 p.m. ET. (for more info, click on the date heading.)
February 19, Manhattan, New York
I’m giving a lecture on storytelling and narrative poetry at The Morgan Library at 6:30 p.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
I’m giving a keynote address at Training Magazine’s annual exposition. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
February 26–March 1, Kingston, New York
I’m leading a weekend retreat workshop called “Poems of Longing”. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
I’ll be giving the keynote for a symposium at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
May 31–June 5, Rhinebeck, New York
This spring, I’m leading a six-day workshop at the Omega Institute. We’ll read and examine poems and also write and discuss our own. I’d love to see you there. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
June 27–July 3, Iona, Scotland
Krista and I will be leading a week of conversation (with some musical guests) on Iona, an island off an island off the west coast of Scotland. It is filled, but if you want to be on a waiting list, you can email the Saint Columba hotel by clicking on the title just above here. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
I think what I love about nature writing is attention, and the invitation to the reader to pay attention too. To attend, to wait, to see and hear and smell what we all too easily miss. And, as you say, to see how we are a part of it too. I think of how Robert Macfarlane’s writing does this, and Helen Macdonald’s (H is for Hawk), but I think my favourite nature poetry is Gerard Manley Hopkins’:
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.
POEM ON AGING
Children are pulled from the rubble
that used to be their home. Soldiers shiver
in a trench in the dead of winter not knowing
when the next artillery barrage begins.
You realize how lucky your life has been,
despite cancer, divorce, the fog of war.
You consumed so many novels, movies,
philosophers, pundits and prophets, but
you are still trying to answer the question
of who you are -- aging and illness
teaching you that we possess nothing,
nothing is permanent. Even the self,
you thought belonged to this package
that is dying, demands a type of freedom.
You still dream, you still love, you still
take long walks in nature
discovering other pilgrims. A mockingbird
balances on a branch, repeats everything
it can mimic, as do I — we
look at each other, perhaps
only one of us wondering who we are.