My nature poetry is all about animals. Rather Marianne Moore-ish, I suppose. She could hardly go a minute without describing pangolins or ostriches. I have anglerfish, wentletraps, and skunks. Animals of my navy-base childhood (horrors! Am I both nature poet and confessional?--whatever). But my animals are, I hope, not just there to let you observe them and think about how great nature is. Usually I write about them so you think how freaking scary nature is and thank god you live in a town where animals are mediated for you through television screens. And hopefully recognize a little of the freaking scary animal in yourself.
The poems are all in various states of non-completion. Although the anglerfish poem (which I just realized, is nature, confessional . . . and written in blank verse. A trifecta of the non-avant!) is pretty close to done. Or "done for now," as you might say.
I was thinking today that this sudden urge to write about animals might come from my having moved to New York, which I found a really distasteful environment for the first few months. I'm dealing with it better now. At first, just the sheer amount of signage, lack of trees except in parks, and lack of ability to see landscape that hadn't been reframed by concrete rectangles of various heights and widths -- well, it made me wildly depressed. And angry. I've got a couple of "I hate New York" poems under my belt -- one finished, and one in the works, but the piss-offed-ness is leaching out, and I wonder if it's because I'm recreating things in poetry. I haven't really noticed anything except the sudden arrival of the animals --no loving descriptions of hills and loblolly trees, for example, but they may just be hiding out in my head, testing the air.
So, watch out for nature. I'm just sayin', is all.
posted by Reen |link| 0 comments
