My Poetry
Explication
My first poem, entitled “Nature,” is based off our reading, A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold. My poem portrays nature as somewhat of a being, and the all the things we have not yet noticed about her are her secrets. Nature knows the whole truth about herself, and truth is what the scholar is after. Since the scholar does not yet know everything (and, according to Leopold, doesn’t want to know everything) about Nature, I called him Unknowing. Sometimes the scholar does find out something true about nature, and, based on what I read by Leopold, that always seems to inspire a sense of awe and wonder. And once the scholar wonders about this truth he has found, he is compelled to care about it, and that caring should direct him to protect the nature from which he obtained his truth. I called Leopold a messenger because he has delivered to us truths about nature. This reading encouraged me to know more about nature because I began to wonder about the nature around me. I am starting to care about it (I am recycling more now!), and knowing more about it will help me to protect it.
My second poem, entitled “Unplaced,” is taken entirely from Wallace Stegner’s chapter called “Sense of Place.” I chose to arrange some of the phrases he used into a poem because his words jumped out at me when I read them; they really inspired me to reflect on my own “placelessness.” My goal was to place these powerful words so that they were most effective in conveying Stegner’s point--that it is important to know where you are and what your history is. I think Stegner wants people to know who they are and where they are for the land’s sake, so they don’t destroy the land in their unconscious moving around. In my poem, I wanted to highlight a related point: That people need to feel placed because there is a certain security that comes from a sense of belonging to the land. This sense of place is found in history, and I was encouraged by Stegner’s writing to know more about history as it relates to me. I hope that my arrangement of Stegner’s words would encourage others to know history and their sense of place, if not for the land, for their own peace of mind.