Assignment 1, Part C.
Ecology considered in too much print
Poem 1
20 lines

CCC3108 S2, 2018: Assignment 1 Part B: Two poems of at least 16 lines.

No metaphor for the faint-hearted

Imagination unlimited springs
Deep. Garners strength, transmits through synapses.
Naked chemicals drift to cells, sparking,
Now darkening, now the nerves know all things.
The eyes window the spirit, the heart sings.
The human unconscious, completely unknown
Perambulates heartstrings, heartening the
Wild blood torrents about the skeleton.
Gristle, sinews, become nitrogelatin, to
Smelt through caverns of still silence. Out to
The Metropolis, Consciousness masses

Runs free of membranous mists, and as that
Beat goes forever on — as it must —who
does not desire to enter the Tourbillon?
Wild world, the worldwide wind, whirlwind, and now
Un-winding, go now wired down to the sea.
Conscious self-will. Slated, elated, arrived.
Arisen from ecstasy, becomes beguiled.
Bath-ed by sunbeams, freely, blithely. So
Alive. Alone. “With nature, reconciled”.

Percy Byce Shelley ‘Mont Blanc: Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni’ (1817), part line 79.

Poem 2
29 lines

What’s in a name

Recently decreed, by man:
Man is a ‘species’.
A species alienated from its own, natural self.
An energetic, burrowing species.

Evidence is possible.
Of induced environments everywhere
Man moves, wheel from lovely and living tree
And the table on which man’s food is set
(Which has no place for robins). So
As it is with the mighty Escalator, the Tin Roof, and the Computer
The window of the wise Wendell Berry’s home.
And the rail on the steps leading up to his front porch.
Each crafted from products won underground
By burrowing anew, species man.

So too the windows on most homes, most windows in most buildings, as
These are some of the somethings man
Energetically burrowing species, makes environment with.
Lately, other men found more empathy in species man, burrowing creature.
For things and beings, more than any other creature known.
Evidence is hardly possible.

Wendell Berry one of few do-ers.
Of empathetic ecology.
Of the keep and the come of the house
Of the depend and interdepend economy.
Of honour between others
between species.
Ensure past, present and future

Meanwhile, Eulogy
Man, species, in his infinite vanity decrees
Gaia, in this period must trans-gender to “The Anthropocene”.
The age of man.

Tutor: Dr. Donna Mazza. Student: Susanne Lorraine Harford. student number 10043898. Tuesday, October 9, 2018 page 1

Notes on Poem 1
From Assignment 1 Part C instructions I have chosen the points 1 and 4, below, of CCC3108 Week 1 Tutorial “Topic 3 Activity: Old world Romantics: Revolution, science and nature” (2018).

“1. What language choices indicated the poet’s attitude towards nature?”
Shelley’s poem formally presents his mainly positive visceral reaction to nature, as in his poem Shelley presents awe, fear, engagement, elation, beauty, truth. A strong vein of negativity threads throughout in his rejection of religion. All these points I thought about as I developed my response.
“4. Can you find the sublime in the poetry?”
Shelley’s poetic subject is the intimate relationship of human imagination in a sublime relationship with nature. My poem dwells on the inspirational connections imagination may bring to the physical human interior. My metaphor of the sublime is how human imagination enhances the internal human experience of the infinite universe. This is the natural human existence, unconscious or conscious.
Shelley uses an almost-constant ten ‘beat’ form per line and irregular rhyming pattern, which creates his masterful, formal presentation of the sublime. In my response I adapted his flow and rhythm of his first, and part of his second two stanza, (to line 20). As Shelley presents land forms, the elements affecting them, and describes human imagination and how those aspects of nature can profoundly affect the human. AS Shelley provides grand verbal pictures for the mind’s eye as he presents the sublime, clearly to the reader. To simulate that effect — of the imagination on the human interior universe — I created vivid descriptions of the natural workings of synapses, cells, nerves, sinews, gristle, blood, skeleton, mind, and the rush of the blood, all of which are equally profound and impressive.
The twenty lines I composed here, of irregular rhyme, below, in response to the classic ode by Percy Bysshe Shelley: ‘Mont Blanc: Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni’ (1817) were influenced also by Nagra’s article about Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Nagra discusses the poem “Kubla Khan” (1816), published the year before Shelley wrote his ode and provides an analysis of language construction possibilities (Nagra, 2014).
Notes on Poem 2
Poem 2 is based on CCC3108 Week 1 introductory Wendell Berry tutorial. My focus here is the Assignment 1 suggestion for reading the work: “What role does the physical setting play in the plot of this work?” Wendell Berry sears the physical setting into the human brain, unforgettably, with colourful, graphic, early statements.
“…I’m sorry for getting here
By a sustained explosion thorough the air,
Burning the world…
The world may end in fire”
Berry keeps this up by applying superb pressure throughout this poem. Short, punchy phrases continue to deliver hard ecological news:
“…burn it in our fit… with smokes and smudges, poison… Burning the world… falsify the land”.
The 29 lines of free-verse is a personal response to Berry’s poem, “A Speech to the Garden Club of America” (2009). In my poem I try to develop shock value too, and used recent scientific news: of man’s recent decision to call this era Anthropocene Stromberg, (2013), to do so.
Another facet of my poem is a recent psychological idea, that humans are more empathetic than any of the other species we are blithely decimating (Taylor, 2012). I used the Christian writer Bouma (2013) for details of Wendell Berry’s home and reported valuable recent conversation snippets, in developing my second poem.

Tutor: Dr. Donna Mazza. Student: Susanne Lorraine Harford. student number 10043898. Tuesday, October 9, 2018 page 2

Reference

Berry, W. (2009). “A speech to the Garden Club of America.” Retrieved from the New Yorker Magazine:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/28/a-speech-to-the-garden-club-of-america

Bouma, R. (2013). My Afternoon with Wendell Berry. Retrieved from the Web site of Think Christian:
https://thinkchristian.reframemedia.com/my-afternoon-with-wendell-berry
Nagra, D. (2014). Kubla Khan [sic] and Coleridge’s exotic language. Retrieved from The British Library Web site: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/kubla-khan-and-coleridges-exotic-language
Shelley, P. B. (1817). “Mont Blanc: Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni.” Retrieved from The British Library Web site:
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/mont-blanc-by-p-b-shelley
Stromberg, J. (2013). The Age of Humans. Retrieved from the Web site of Smithsonian Magazine:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-is-the-anthropocene-and-are-we-in-it-164801414/

Taylor, S. (2012). Empathy: The ability that makes us truly human. Retrieved from the Web site of Psychology Today at:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201203/empathy-the-ability-makes-us-truly-human

Wong. B. M., Candolin, U. (2015). Behavioral responses to changing environments, Behavioral Ecology, V 26, 3, pp. 665–673, Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/aru183

Tutor: Dr. Donna Mazza. Student: Susanne Lorraine Harford. student number 10043898. Tuesday, October 9, 2018 page 3