A Comparison

While writing my paper last night I realized that there are some similarities between Gary Snyder and Sally Mann. In many poems, especially “The Bath” Snyder portrays his children as sexual beings with innocent minds. As far as I know there is no criticism of his portrayal of children in this way, and it’s actually fairly beautiful at times. Sally Mann caused a great deal of controversy by taking nude photos of her children in ways that while they show the innocence of being a child, have some extremely sexual undertones. Like Snyder’s portrayal, her photos are stunningly beautiful to look at. They both portray their children in sexual, unusual, and beautiful ways.

What do we do?

Last Friday, while you were all wondering through a farm in the morning, I too visited two gardens.  My mother started gardening to a larger extent with a friend and so I wandered out with her early in the morning to help pick tomatoes.  We also visited another friend’s garden where we picked red raspberries.  I was away when the event of the day started though.  When I returned, there was quite a buzz.   Baby snapping turtles were crawling out of the ground, making their attempt at life.  My mothers friend began to collect them.  almost 30 all together.  She made phone calls and asked what the best thing to do with them was.  There is not my areas of water close by and it is possible, as the phone calls confirmed, that not all of them will make it.   The friend transported them, though slightly illegal to a place more worthy for a turtle life.  As this class ends, i’ve found that it is still difficult to answer questions about our involvement.  Because we have the ability to help an animal out, assist it in its survival, should we?  Turtles lay many eggs because it is highly possibly that many of them may not survive.   What if we save too many?  Where does our involvement enter into a kind of management?

cute, aren’t they?

Farm Poetry

vertical yields–erudite

and prosperous, two weeks only

have passed, and the harvest

feels the ceiling and fills its gaps.

The sky is flush, pregnant, palpable anticipation links

me to this expectant mother,

my pitchfork signals

PUSH! sweat from my brim

heat from my brow

I’m doing my part, the land needs

another signature, a government stamp

permission to proceed and

to prosper, we wait, me and the land,

the land and me together as brothers or sisters

husband and wife or father and child

we live or die together, as one.

the end of the world as we know it?

So, while writing my paper all night and into this early morning, I found myself making a connection to a well-known song by R.E.M.   can you guess which one?

I’m sure that we’ve all taken away important concepts and perhaps questioned our own morality after this block. Does the song sound different to you now? So, is it the end of the world as we know it? And do you feel fine?

 

Im tired, and couldnt category this…

So im freakin up at freakin 5 in the morning still writing my freakin paper, and it hit me. I mean besides the fact that this paper is hard, everyone that we are reading about in this class is SUCH A HIPPIE! It made me wonder how many of them walked the streets and protested against tree cutting and what not. Or how many of them even did. Are they just writers that act like they care and want to give off that image but really didnt get of their a** and actually try to change the world? Or were they all crazy and chained themselves to trees and threw bombs at logger companies or something. So i guess the question is, are any of these writers even for real or are they posers? Acting like every other American? Want to change something in the world but is way to lazy to try? And think they can get off the hook by writing some fake heart felt essay…? As i go crazy here my peers, ASK YOUR SELF!!!!!! WHAT WOULD A REAL ENVIRONMENTALIST DO!?!?!?!?

“Buying Green”

“Green-consumption” is, at best, an oxymoron. Consumption in any form takes from the environment without and return. Yet we are led to believe by all of these new “green” products that we are giving back to the environment. Spoon fed the idea that by buying a certain product, we are indirectly helping to save the rainforest and clean up the oceans. I have noticed that many products now have the color green on them as if to imply that they are somehow ecologically friendly. The fact that marketing agencies exploit the conservation movement is disgusting but it does have benefits.

We live in a consumer driven society and we are all going to consume no matter what. Any attempts to make our buying more sustainable or green are at least steps in the right direction. Also, as we talked about today in class, “buying green” raises awareness for conservation issues in the public. Despite counter arguments (which I partially agree with) that “buying green” is only a trend and that consumers become more complacent when they buy green. It does give consumers a chance to vote with their wallets as the industry follows trends in consumption. So hopefully the buy green movement has had some impact on industrial consumption.

I have mixed feelings about buying green. If consumers were really concerned about the environment they would put there hard earned cash towards charities that would spend all of the money on conservation or they would contribute their own time towards planting a garden or something. However, in scenarios when consumption is absolutely necessary (ie buying groceries, clothes, cars, etc.) and the products actually benefit the environment in some way (not just saying they are green) then I support buying green.

Thank You

Dear Class and Glenn,

Thank you all for a wonderful block.  I was nervous about this class to begin with, I am not the best writer and am uncomfortable with reading and analyzing great works by people like Emerson and Thoreau.  But, I apreciate the discussions we had in class and outside of class.

I will leave this block with a much different outlook.  I still go to my place, in fact, it is now a place where I can unwind and have mind-opening experiences with nature and all that I love about it.  I am able to be emotional there and I know that as I change and grow, it does the same.  Nature is always moving and is always full of the most vibrant life.  I take care not to step on crickets on the sidewalk because I know they are important and a part of a wide and diverse cycle.  I feel the wind in my hair and the sun boring down on the earth.  I look forward to waking up each morning to look out my window and see what is new in the day, and each night I am eager for the colors of the sunset. 

I do feel like the world is crashing down around me, especially after this last week.  I have become more aware of my use of resources and have been conscious about using less. I try to put everything I can into the recycle bins.  I hope that someday I can participate in some sort of activism to save the planet.  I want to be able to enjoy the wild and nature for as long as my life lasts and for my children to enjoy it too.  It disgusts me to know that some people can be so selfish that they pour cement over wildflowers and destroy mountains.  I hope to make a difference.

So thank you all for sharing your ideas and opinions.  I agreed with some and disagreed with others, but I loved expanding my worldview.  I will take so much away from this class and am very sad to be leaving it.  My friends, the stories, the arguments, the wonderful professor, have all made this such a wonderful experience for me. 

Go to nature, see the world, be free.

Are We Even Human Anymore?

In class we have discussed what is Nature, what is Wilderness, and what is wild. After reading other sources outside of class on topics from clothing, to work, to relationships, and everything else we do in our day to day lives, I have to wonder, what is human and are we even human anymore? It seems that all we as people do in our day to day lives is do things that feel unpleasant, go against our instincts, or that require sacrifice. Is that really human? Weren’t humans once a species like any other that worked to survive and used instincts for that survival? Now it seems that we have come so far past surviving and so far into thriving that we no longer need instincts (though they are still there). Doesn’t this mean that we should be an entirely different species by now? Though this topic doesn’t seem to come from class, the idea popped up during many discussions and the idea of natural really made me think about this.

“poets gone wild”

I’m not sure if we’re still supposed to do a post for this half-week, but regardless, I’d like to share this with anyone who’s still reading the blog at this point. I stumbled upon this while listening to my music on shuffle the other day and I wish I’d thought of it sooner. Music is a huge part of my life, and a lot of artists use it to bring up issues of nature, much like Snyder uses poetry.

One of the artists I really love is Serj Tankian. You may have heard of him a year or so ago when a couple of his songs got popular, or from when he was a part of System of a Down. I was never into SOAD, but Serj’s solo stuff goes in a different direction that really speaks to me. I like its blend of violent, disquieting punk aspects (we can tell where that influence came from), really unique and sometimes tender melodies, and powerful, poetic lyrics. The song that hooked me was “Empty Walls” which was on MTV or something a while ago, as a direct protest to the war in Iraq. Once I got the whole cd, I quickly realized Serj is not afraid to tackle lots of hotbed issues with forcefulness but attention to the craft; he doesn’t just whine about his views while strumming a guitar or lose the strength of his message in the music.

I want to share two music videos with you, because I think they have relevence to this classs=. The first is perhaps my favourite of his songs, “Sky is Over,” a heartfelt elegy for our air, which is being poisoned by pollution and threatened by ozone depletion. I love that he speaks to the sky as if it’s a friend or a lover – you can’t help but be affected by it and feel somewhat responsible. This song still gives me chills.

The next is perhaps even more relevent – “Honking Antelope,” a bizarre, angry, and spiritual journey through a ravaged Earth with a bleak outlook for the future. The lyrics remind me a lot of Turtle Island’s more pessimistic poems. The whole song has a sense of ghostliness, things already lost and the futile attempt to hold on to them. My favourite lines are, “We are the cause of a world thats gone wrong/Nature will survive us human dogs after all.” It gets under your skin, makes  you feel that you are nothing more than a not-so-smart ape with your finger on the doomsday button. Incidentally, I think the video itself is pretty bad, so feel free to ignore it ^_^

“Gen”

Hey, I wanted to touch on the “Gen” poem. I just want to express the way I see it. I see it as a little girl crying to her mother about the bad in this world, but the mother reminds her of dreams and comforts her finally by saying “don’t cry”.

I see this as hope, a force of light. The way this poem is written I feel shows the innocence of a child as the way they would see nature going down the poop hole. Then as our parents did when we were kids, the mother tries to reasure the girl through words. Whether she believes it, is left unsaid. Does Snyder believe this? I don’t know but I feel this innocence still reside through out the poem. What are your thoughts on this poem?