Marcella,
The way people talk about ecopoetry baffles me entirely. As does the poetry that ends up being in this category.

Very worrying indeed. Thanks for your post, which does get at some of the possibilities.
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First, the poem is a creative endeavor—an exploration, a live entity that unfolds as it’s written and read. If everything within the poem is known before it’s even begun, then what’s the point of writing or reading it? Poems are not factual reports, intended to convey knowledge in the most transparent, most denotative language possible. Instead, a poem may use (hopefully) unexpected language or surprising juxtapositions that may not even make any immediate sense. A poem ostensibly about bees and colony collapse disorder could end up with tractor-trailers or issues of immigration in it, or veer toward an abstract translation of what flower markings might “say” to bees. I believe it is for this quality that poetry may be quite valuable in exploring ideas of ecology, in that it is able to make those surprising jumps—to hypothesize about the unknown, to be the fools who venture in, to explore inappropriate subjects, images, or language—to make those connections that most wouldn’t dare approach, for fear of being “inaccurate.”

I know the disciplines of science and poetry are vastly different in their methodology, and it can be difficult for one to appreciate the other. And I’m not arguing that poets be deliberately ignorant of the facts. But, I also think it’s essential to preserve a freedom to construct a poem that is not necessarily a delivery system for those facts; instead, an ecopoet may enter writing a poem to discover what may happen if, for instance, the language of a corporate memo is used to describe a field of genetically engineered corn. Another example is how the poet Tina Darragh explores the language of the animal rights movement, and how it can be broken apart and reconstructed within a poem. Anyway, I guess the gist of this is that I wouldn’t recommend reading a poem for your most up-to-date and accurate information on colony collapse disorder, but I would recommend reading it if you wanted a jolt to your innards and a fresh perspective on the subject!
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Of course, as soon as I post THIS one it will show up and then I’ll look COMPLETELY insane.
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(and in two different versions, no less.)

Thanks.

Thanks.

Ain’t life fun (and weird)?
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.
Mockingbird

.
I see God’s hand in amber clouds
with golden rays above blue seas,
in black stripes on orange fur.
I see His plan in flowering tree,
in hummingbirds and honeybees,
in every desperate cur.

Call me crazy…well, they do,
but I see His thoughts in cobras, too.
I see His will in crocodiles,
in spider webs with morning dew.

They see God in human beings
and Satan in the wild,
but I see the Devil in you and me
and in every human child.
The roots of Poison Ivy
always grow new vines.

I see that mockingbird on the fence over there
just winked his eye at me.

.
Copyright 2008 – SOFTWOOD-Seventy-eight poems, Gary B. Fitzgerald
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Humanity is
the start of the race, I say
humanity is the mold to break away from, the crust to
break through, the coal to break into fire,
The atom to be split.

Terreson
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Thanks for the added clarification. In the end I do agree with you that “eco-poets” should know their stuff. Forrest Gander teaches a course on eco-poetry at Brown and there’s some discussion in his posts (archived here at Harriet) on the subject.

I don’t entirely agree with you that poets need to know everything about any subject about which they might chose to write. I think it depends on the subject and what our idea of “knowledge” is. But I do agree with you that certain subjects call for a more exacting empiricism – even on the part of poets – than do others.

I’m particularly glad to see, in a thread like this, your introduction of a different critical standard. There needs to be more traffic between the different discourses. I’d be fascinated to here from both the author of the poem, and of course, from Camille, about what you have to say.

Martin
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Zachariah Wells beat me to the punch. Karen Solie is, IMHO, the best of the younger non-metrical print poets.

“Irony takes you out at night
but appetite drives you home …”

“…the waiting moment, buckling into circumstance…”

– K.S.
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.
Mockingbird

I see God’s hand in amber clouds
with golden rays above blue seas,
in black stripes on orange fur.
I see His plan in honeybees,
in mockingbirds and flowering trees,
in every desperate cur.

Call me crazy…well, they do,
but I see His thoughts in cobras, too.
I see His will in crocodiles.
They see God in human beings
and Satan in the wild,
but I see the Devil in you and me
and in every human child.
The roots of Poison Ivy
always grow new vines.

I see that mockingbird on the fence over there
just winked his eye at me.

.
Copyright 2008 – SOFTWOOD-Seventy-eight Poems, Gary B. Fitzgerald
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By way of an intro, the blogger says this: “Interspecies communication” is the most graceful poem about the collapse of the bee colonies I’ve come across thus far.” Now either an assumption has been made about the nature of the poem itself, or the poet has traded on the notion of colony collapse. I am simply going on the information handed me, that the poem is about colony collapse. About twenty years or so ago there was a reported phenomenon similar in appearance and symptoms to today’s so-called CCD. It was called something like Disappearing Colony Syndrome, or something of the sort. The causes and the condition were never fully understood. It could have had to do with a then new varroa mite cominbg out of Asia and introduced into the Western Hemisphere by way of Argentina. My only point being that a poem written in ’03, in fact, could refer to a kind of colony collapse or colony disappearance, the difference between which two descriptions I would say is moot.

My post is not intended to comment on the poem as poem. I observe here that the poem’s lifted strophe(?) is language rich and shows a fine degree of facility with the language. The point of my post is this: know what you write about and know it from the inside out. If you write about love know about love (and its abscence). If you write about war know about war. If you write about honey bees, especially when you are looking to hang a metaphor on their natural history, then know the natural history. The write-about-what-you-know-school is the one I belong to. The beekeepers I know would read the passage, shrug their shoulders, and go back to what they do know from the inside out. (By the way, Martin Earl, I am no expert about honey bees. The people I cavort with are experts. They’ve worked at it for twenty years plus. Me just seven. They can think like a bee, so to speak. I am still learning the habit. They know what they know from the inside out. Such a simple principle that sometimes seems to be lost on all but poets.)

Andrea Nicki, Inanna is one of the reasons I got fascinated with honey bees.

Terreson
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You do us a service to fill us in on your work and on the seriousness of CCD. I’ve read that bee populations have been shrinking steadily since the 1970s for a variety of reasons. But the catastrophic loss (correct me if I’m wrong) came much later. Colony collapse disorder was given a name in 2006.

I don’t think your knowledge, as an expert in the field, should preclude appreciation of what is a gorgeous poem and a excellent and sensitive reading by Camille.

Di Brant’s poem comes from a book that was published in 2003 – I’m sure the poem was written will before 2003, given the time lag in publishing poetry these days. My point is the the poem predates colony collapse disorder by some years. Perhaps if the poet were writing the poem today she would write it differently, just as Thoreau would have written differently about 21st century bean fields.

Martin
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I am passing tired of poets and other writers who look to make hay out of honey bees without bothering to get some knowing of their natural history or with how they think and behave. The Brandt poem quoted from does not speak to my day to day experience in an apiary. Nor does it speak to the probable causes (the debate is still ongoing) of CCD (colony collapse disorder). It only speaks to the poet’s preoccupations. It has nothing to do with the natural history of either honey bees or with the pathogens that impact them.

I won’t bother poets with what I figure are the probable causes of CCD. If I am right honey bee foragers see less light in their eyes and more fungi producing dysentary in their intestines that wears them out, wears them down to where they can’t make it back to home.

Now there is the poem-line Brandt should have pursued. And seriously, know your nature history before looking to capitalize on it.

Terreson
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