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Home , Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, The Rising Sun

2014–2015

Literature RESOURCE GUIDE Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Nature Writing, and Environmental Literature

The vision of the United States Academic Decathlon® is to provide students the opportunity to excel academically through team competition. Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA Toll Free: 866-511-USAD (8723) • Direct: 712-366-3700 • Fax: 712-366-3701 • Email: [email protected] • Website: www.usad.org This material may not be reproduced or transmitted, in whole or in part, by any means, including but not limited to photocopy, print, electronic, or internet display (public or private sites) or downloading, without prior written permission from USAD. Violators may be prosecuted. Copyright © 2014 by United States Academic Decathlon®. All rights reserved. Table of Contents

Style and Technique...... 28 SECTION I: Critical Reading...... 4 Chapter One: “Heaven and Earth in Jest” ...... 29 Chapter Two: “Seeing”...... 32 SECTION II: Nature Writing, Environmental Literature, Chapter Three: “Winter”...... 33 and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. . . .. 10 Chapter Four: “The Fixed”...... 35 Introduction...... 10 Chapter Five: “Untying the Knot”...... 36 The Natural History Essay Chapter Six: “The Present” ...... 37 and the Romantic Movement...... 11 Chapter Seven: “Spring” ...... 38 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature...... 11 Chapter Eight: “Intricacy”...... 39 Henry David Thoreau’s Walden ...... 11 Chapter Nine: “Flood” ...... 40 Historical Context ...... 12 Chapter Ten: “Fecundity” ...... 40 Keywords...... 15 Chapter Eleven: “Stalking”...... 41 The Sublime ...... 15 Chapter Twelve: “Nightwatch”...... 43 The Gothic...... 16 Chapter Thirteen: “The Horns of the Altar”. . . . . 44 Industrial Revolution ...... 16 Chapter Fourteen: “Northing”...... 44 American Transcendentalism...... 17 Chapter Fifteen: “The Waters of Separation”. . . . 46 Modernism ...... 17 SECTION III: Postmodernism...... 17 Selected Poetry Creative Nonfiction...... 17 and Short Works of Literature...... 47 Environmentalism...... 17 Introduction...... 47 Nature Writing...... 17 Keywords...... 48 Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) – Summary...... 18 Romanticism...... 48 Annie Dillard Biography...... 19 Victorian Period...... 49 Dillard’s Literary Influences ...... 21 Orientalism ...... 49 Theology and Theodicy...... 24 Sonnet...... 49 Organization and Structure ...... 26 Free Verse...... 50 Narrative Persona...... 26 Lyric ...... 50 Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 2 GUIDE Speaker ...... 50 “Passage to India”—Analysis...... 68 Narrative ...... 51 SELECTED WORK: Pastoral ...... 51 “A Wind-storm in the Forests,” by John Muir. . . . 71 Anthropomorphism ...... 51 “A Wind-storm in the Forests”—Analysis ...... 76 Anthropocentrism...... 51 SELECTED WORK: Anthropogenic ...... 51 “There Will Come Soft Rains,” by Sara Teasdale ...... 79 Deep Ecology ...... 52 “There Will Come Soft Rains”—Analysis. . . . . 79 Author Biographies...... 52 William Wordsworth...... 52 SELECTED WORK: “The Horses,” by Edwin Muir...... 81 Walt Whitman...... 53 “The Horses”—Analysis...... 81 John Muir ...... 53 SELECTED WORK: Sara Teasdale...... 54 “Carmel Point,” by Robinson Jeffers...... 84 Edwin Muir ...... 55 “Carmel Point”—Analysis...... 84 Robinson Jeffers...... 55 SELECTED WORK: Jorie Graham...... 56 “Positive Feedback Loop,” by Jorie Graham. . . . 86 Lucia Perillo...... 57 “Positive Feedback Loop”—Analysis...... 87 SELECTED WORK: “The World Is Too Much With Us,” SELECTED WORK: by William Wordsworth...... 58 “To the Field of Scotch Broom that Will Be Buried by the New Wing of the Mall,” “The World Is Too Much With Us”—Analysis . . . . 58 by Lucia Perillo ...... 90 SELECTED WORK: “Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways” “To the Field of Scotch Broom that by William Wordsworth...... 59 Will Be Buried by the New Wing of the Mall” —Analysis...... 90 “Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways” —Analysis...... 59 Notes...... 92 SELECTED WORK: “Passage to India,” by Walt Whitman ...... 62 Bibliography...... 94 Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 3 T I O E C N S I

Critical Reading

Critical reading is a familiar exercise to students, Charles Dickens, F . Scott Fitzgerald, John Fitzgerald an exercise that many of them have been engaged Kennedy, Jane Austen), no dates will be provided, in since the first grade . Critical reading forms a but the work or the occasion will be cited . For writ- major part (more than fifty percent) of the PSAT, ers less familiar to high school students, dates will the SAT, the ACT, and both Advanced Placement be provided . Using this information, students can Tests in English . It is the portion of any test for begin to place the passage into context . As they which students can do the least direct preparation, start to read, students will want to focus on what and it is also the portion that will reward students they know about that writer, his or her typical style who have been lifelong readers . Unlike other parts and concerns, or that time period, its values and of the United States Academic Decathlon Test in its limitations . A selection from Thomas Paine in Literature, where the questions will be based on the eighteenth century is written against a differ- specific works of literature that the students have ent background and has different concerns from been studying diligently, the critical reading pas- a selection written by Dr . Martin Luther King Jr . sage in the test, as a previously unseen passage, prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act . Toni will have an element of surprise . In fact, the test Morrison writes against a different background writers usually go out of their way to choose pas- from that of Charles Dickens . sages from works not previously encountered in Passages are chosen from many different kinds of high school so as to avoid making the critical read- texts—fiction, biography, letters, speeches, essays, ing items a mere test of recall . From one point of newspaper columns, and magazine articles—and view, not having to rely on memory actually makes may come from a diverse group of writers, varying questions on critical reading easier than the other in gender, race, location, and time period . A likely questions because the answer must always be question is one that asks readers to speculate on somewhere in the passage, stated either directly what literary form the passage is excerpted from . or indirectly, and careful reading will deliver the The passage itself will offer plenty of clues as to its answer . genre, and the name of the writer often offers clues Since students can feel much more confident as well . Excerpts from fiction contain the elements with some background information and some one might expect to find in fiction—descriptions knowledge of the types of questions likely to be of setting, character, or action . Letters have a asked, the first order of business is for the student sense of sharing thoughts with a particular person . to contextualize the passage by asking some key Speeches have a wider audience and a keen aware- questions . Who wrote it? When was it written? In ness of that audience; speeches also have some what social, historical, or literary environment was particular rhetorical devices peculiar to the genre . it written? Essays and magazine articles are usually focused on one topic of contemporary, local, or universal In each passage used on a test, the writer’s name interest . is provided, followed by the work from which the passage was excerpted or the date it was Other critical reading questions can be divided into published or the dates of the author’s life . If the two major types: reading for meaning and reading author is well known to high school students (e g. ,. for analysis . The questions on reading for meaning Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 4 GUIDE are based solely on understanding what the pas- information in the passage to other situations not sage is saying, and the questions on analysis are mentioned in the passage . based on how the writer says what he or she says . In reading for analysis, students are asked to rec- In reading for meaning, the most frequently asked ognize some aspects of the writer’s craft . One of question is one that inquires about the passage’s these aspects may be organization . How has the main idea since distinguishing a main idea from writer chosen to organize his or her material? Is it a supporting idea is an important reading skill . A a chronological narrative? Does it describe a place question on main ideas is sometimes disguised as using spatial organization? Is it an argument with a question asking for an appropriate title for the points clearly organized in order of importance? passage . Most students will not select as the main Is it set up as a comparison and contrast? Does it idea a choice that is neither directly stated nor indi- offer an analogy or a series of examples? If there rectly implied in the passage, but harder questions is more than one paragraph in the excerpt, what will present choices that do appear in the passage is the relationship between the paragraphs? What but are not main ideas . Remember that an answer transition does the writer make from one para- choice may be a true statement but not the right graph to the next? answer to the question . Other questions could be based on the writer’s Closely related to a question on the main idea of a attitude toward the subject, the appropriate tone passage is a question about the writer’s purpose . he or she assumes, and the way language is used If the passage is fiction, the purpose, unless it is a to achieve that tone . Of course, the tone will vary digression—and even digressions are purposeful according to the passage . In informational nonfic- in the hands of good writers—will in some way tion, the tone will be detached and matter-of-fact, serve the elements of fiction . The passage will except when the writer is particularly enthusiastic develop a character, describe a setting, or advance about the subject or has some other kind of emotional involvement such as anger, disappointment, the plot . If the passage is non-fiction, the writer’s sorrow, or nostalgia . He or she may even assume purpose might be purely to inform; it might be to an ironic tone that takes the form of exaggerating persuade; it might be to entertain; or it might be or understating a situation or describing it as the any combination of all three of these . Students opposite of what it is . With each of these methods may also be questioned about the writer’s audi- of irony, two levels of meaning are present—what ence . Is the passage intended for a specific group, is said and what is implied . An ironic tone is usually or is it aimed at a larger audience? used to criticize or to mock . The easy part of the Critical Reading section is A writer of fiction uses tone differently, depending that the answer to the question is always in the on what point of view he or she assumes . If the passage, and for most of the questions, students author chooses a first-person point of view and do not need to bring previous knowledge of the becomes one of the characters, he or she has to subject to the task . However, for some questions, assume a persona and develop a character through students are expected to have some previous that character’s thoughts, actions, and speeches . knowledge of the vocabulary, terms, allusions, This character is not necessarily sympathetic and and stylistic techniques usually acquired in an is sometimes even a villain, as in some of the short English class . Such knowledge could include, but stories of Edgar Allan Poe . Readers have to pick up is not limited to, knowing vocabulary, recognizing this tone from the first few sentences . If the author an allusion, and identifying literary and rhetorical is writing a third-person narrative, the tone will devices . vary in accordance with how intrusive the narrator In addition to recognizing the main idea of a pas- appears to be . Some narrators are almost invisible sage, students will be required to demonstrate while others are more intrusive, pausing to editori- a more specific understanding . Questions mea- alize, digress, or, in some cases, address the reader suring this might restate information from the directly . passage and ask students to recognize the most Language is the tool the author uses to reveal atti- exact restatement . For such questions, students tude and point of view . A discussion of language will have to demonstrate their clear understanding includes the writer’s syntax and diction . Are the of a specific passage or sentence . A deeper level sentences long or short? Is the length varied—is of understanding may be examined by asking there an occasional short sentence among lon- students to make inferences on the basis of the ger ones? Does the writer use parallelism and passage or to draw conclusions from evidence balanced sentence structure? Are the sentences in the passage . In some cases, students may be predominantly simple, complex, compound, or asked to extend these conclusions by applying compound-complex? How does the writer use Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 5 SAMPLE PASSAGE TO PREPARE FOR CRITICAL READING In order to prepare for the critical reading portion of the test, it may be helpful for students to take a look at a sample passage . Here is a passage used in an earlier test . The passage is an excerpt from Mary Shelley’s 1831 Introduction to Frankenstein .

“We will each write a ghost story,” said Lord Byron, and his proposition was acceded to . There were four of us . The noble author began a tale, a fragment of which he printed at the end of his poem of Mazeppa . Shelley, more apt to embody ideas and sentiments in the radiance of brilliant imagery and in the music of the most melodious verse that adorns our (5) language than to invent the machinery of a story, commenced one founded on the experiences of his early life . Poor Polidori had some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady who was so punished for peeping through a key-hole—what to see I forget: something very shocking and wrong of course; but when she was reduced to a worse condition than the renowned Tom of Coventry1, he did not know what to do with her and (10) was obliged to dispatch her to the tomb of the Capulets, the only place for which she was fitted . The illustrious poets also, annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished their uncongenial task .

I busied myself to think of a story—a story to rival those which had excited us to this task . One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling (15) horror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart . If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name . I thought and pondered—vainly . I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations . “Have you thought of a story?” I was asked each morning, and each (20) morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative .

Mary Shelley Introduction to Frankenstein (1831)

1. Tom of Coventry—Peeping Tom who was struck blind for looking as Lady Godiva passed by.

INSTRUCTIONS: On your answer sheet, mark the lettered space (a, b, c, d, or e) corresponding to the answer that BEST completes or answers each of the following test items . 1. The author’s purpose in this passage 2. According to the author, Shelley’s is to talents were in a . analyze the creative process a . entiment and invention b . demonstrate her intellectual superiority b . diction and sound patterns c . name-drop her famous acquaintances c . thought and feeling d . denigrate the efforts of her companions d . brightness and ornamentation e . narrate the origins of her novel e . insight and analysis Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 6 GUIDE 3. The author’s descriptions of Shelley’s 7. “Noble” (line 2) can be BEST talents might be considered all of understood to mean the following EXCEPT a . principled a . accurate b . aristocratic b . prejudiced c . audacious c . appreciative d . arrogant d . detached e . eminent e . exaggerated 8. All of the following constructions, 4. The author’s attitude toward Polidori likely to be questioned by a strict is grammarian or a computer grammar check, are included in the passage a . amused EXCEPT b . sincere a . a shift in voice c . derisive b . unconventional punctuation d . ironic c . sentence fragments e . matter-of-fact d . run-on sentences 5. The author’s approach to the task e . a sentence ending with a preposition differs from that of the others in 9. In context “platitude” (line 11) can that she begins by thinking of be BEST understood to mean a . her own early experiences a . intellectual value b . poetic terms and expressions b . philosophical aspect c . the desired effect on her readers c . commonplace quality d . outperforming her male companions d . heightened emotion e . praying for inspiration e . demanding point of view 6. At the end of the excerpt the author 10. “The tomb of the Capulets” (line 10) feels is an allusion to a . determined a . Shakespeare b . despondent b . Edgar Allan Poe c . confident c . English history d . relieved d . Greek mythology e . resigned e . the legends of King Arthur

ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS OF ANSWERS 1 . (e) This type of question appears in most sets of critical reading questions . (a) might appear to be a possible answer, but the passage does not come across as very analytical, nor does it seem like a discussion of the creative process but rather is more a description of a game played by four writers to while away the time . (b) and (c) seem unlikely answers . Mary Shelley’s account here sounds as if she is conscious of inferiority in such illustrious company rather than superiority . She has no need to name-drop, as she married one of the illustrious poets and at that time was the guest of the other . She narrates the problems she had in coming up with a story, but since the passage tells us that she is the author of Frankenstein, we know that she did come up with a story . The answer is (e) . 2 . (b) This type of question asks readers to recognize a restatement of ideas found in the passage . The sentence under examination is found in lines 3–6, and students are asked to recognize that “diction and sound patterns” refers to “radiance of brilliant imagery” and “music of the most melodious verse ”. (a) would not be possible because even his adoring wife finds him not inventive . “Thought and feeling,” (c), appear as “ideas and sentiments” (line 3), which according to the passage are merely the vehicles to exhibit Shelley’s talents . Answer (d), incorporating “brightness,” might refer to “brilliant” in line 4, but “ornamentation” is too artificial a word for the author to use in reference to her talented husband . (e) is incorrect, as insight and analysis are not alluded to in the passage . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 7 3 . (d) This question is related to Question 2 in that it discusses Shelley’s talents and the author’s opinion of them . The writer is obviously not “detached” in her description of her very talented husband . She is obviously “prejudiced” and “appreciative” . She may even exaggerate, but history has shown her to be accurate in her opinion .

4 . (a) This is another question about the writer’s attitude . Some of the adjectives can be immediately dismissed . She is not ironic—she means what she says . She is not an unkind writer, and she does not use a derisive tone . However, there is too much humor in her tone for it to be sincere or matter-of-fact . The correct answer is that she is amused .

5 . (c) This question deals with the second paragraph and how the author set about writing a story . Choices (a), (b), (d), and (e) may seem appropriate beginnings for a writer, but they are not mentioned in the passage . What she does focus on is the desired effect on her readers, (c), as outlined in detail in lines 13–16 .

6 . (b) This question asks for an adjective to describe the author’s feeling at the end of the excerpt . The expressions “blank incapability” (line 17) and “mortifying negative” (line 20) suggest that “despondent” is the most appropriate answer .

7 . (b) This question deals with vocabulary in context . The noble author is Lord Byron, a hereditary peer of the realm, and the word in this context of describing him means “aristocratic ”. “Principled,” (a), and “eminent,” (e), are also possible synonyms for “noble” but not in this context . Byron in his private life was eminently unprincipled (nicknamed “the bad Lord Byron”) and lived overseas to avoid public enmity . (c) and (d) are not synonyms for “noble ”.

8 . (d) This is a type of question that appears occasionally in a set of questions on critical reading . Such questions require the student to examine the sentence structure of professional writers and to be aware that these writers sometimes take liberties in order to make a more effective statement .

They know the rules, and, therefore, they may break them! An additional difficulty is that the question is framed as a negative, so students may find it a time-consuming question as they mentally check off which constructions Shelley does employ so that by a process of elimination they may arrive at which construction is not included . The first sentence contains both choices (a) and (e), a shift in voice and a sentence ending in a preposition . Neither of these constructions is a grammatical error, but computer programs point them out . The conventional advice is that both should be used sparingly, and they should be used when avoiding them becomes more cumbersome than using them . The sentence beginning in line 14 is a sentence fragment (c), but an effective one . Choice (b) corresponds to the sentence beginning in line 6 and finishing in line 11, which contains a colon, semicolon, and a dash (somewhat unconventional) without the author’s ever losing control . This sentence is not a run-on even though many students may think it is! The answer to the question then is (d) .

9 . (c) Here is another vocabulary in context question . Knowing the poets involved and their tastes, students will probably recognize that it is (c), the commonplace quality of prose, that turns the poets away and not one of the loftier explanations provided in the other distracters .

10 . (a) The allusion to “the tomb of the Capulets” in line 10 is an example of a situation where a student is expected to have some outside knowledge, and this will be a very easy question for students . Romeo and Juliet is fair game for American high school students . Notice that the other allusion is footnoted, as this is a more obscure allusion for American high school students, although well known to every English schoolboy and schoolgirl . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 8 GUIDE tense? Does he or she vary the mood of the verb lary in context, and one on an allusion . Students from indicative to interrogative to imperative? should learn how to use the process of elimination Does the writer shift between active and passive when the answer is not immediately obvious . The voice? If so, why? How do these choices influence organization of the questions is also typical of the the tone? usual arrangement of Critical Reading questions . Occasionally, a set of questions may include a Questions on the content of the passage, the main grammar question . For example, an item might idea, and supporting ideas generally appear first require students to identify what part of speech a and are in the order they are found in the passage . particular word is being used as, what the anteced- They are followed by questions applying to the ent of a pronoun is, or what a modifier modifies . whole passage, including general questions about Being able to answer demonstrates that the stu- the writer’s tone and style . Students should be able dent understands the sentence structure and the to work their way through the passage, finding the writer’s meaning in a difficult or sometimes pur- answers as they go . posefully ambiguous sentence . Additional questions on an autobiographical selec- With diction, or word choice, one must also con- tion like this passage might ask what is revealed sider whether the words are learned and ornate or about the biographer herself or which state- simple and colloquial . Does the writer use slang ments in the passage associate the author with or jargon? Does he or she use sensual language? Romanticism . Does the writer use figurative language or classical Since passages for critical reading come in a wide allusions? Is the writer’s meaning clearer because variety of genres, students should keep in mind an abstract idea is associated with a concrete that other types of questions could be asked on image? Does the reader have instant recognition other types of passages . For instance, passages of a universal symbol? If the writer does any of the above, what tone is achieved through the various from fiction can generate questions about point of possibilities of language? Is the writing formal or view, about characters and how these characters informal? Does the writer approve of or disapprove are presented, or about setting, either outdoor or of or ridicule his or her subject? Does he or she use indoor, and the role it is likely to play in a novel or connotative rather than denotative words to con- short story . vey these emotions? Do you recognize a pattern of Speeches generate some different kinds of ques- images or words throughout the passage? tions because of the oratorical devices a speaker Some questions on vocabulary in context deal might use—repetition, anaphora, or appeals to var- with a single word . The word is not usually an ious emotions . Questions could be asked about the unfamiliar word, but it is often a word with multiple use of metaphors, the use of connotative words, meanings, depending on the context or the date of and the use of patterns of words or images . the passage, as some words have altered in mean- The suggestions made in this section of the resource ing over the years . guide should provide a useful background for crit- This set of ten questions is very typical—one on ical reading . Questions are likely to follow similar purpose, a couple on restatement of supporting patterns, and knowing what to expect boosts confi- ideas, some on tone and style, two on vocabu- dence when dealing with unfamiliar material . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 9 T I O N E C I S I Nature Writing, Environmental Literature, and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Introduction one’s own familiar patterns . Literature offers an unparalleled means of putting oneself in someone When we consider a timely theme such as “New else’s shoes—of trying out new ways of looking at Alternatives in Energy: Ingenuity and Innovation,” the world . The word “alternative” comes from the we probably think of solar panels, wind turbines, Latin root alter, meaning “other ”. The goal of this hybrid automobiles, and public transportation sys- resource guide, then, is to introduce you to a great tems, or of super-insulated homes with wood work of literature that is all about considering new stoves and triple-glazed argon-filled windows . Or, perspectives to our understanding of everyday life . if we are interested in efforts to mitigate global climate change, we may wonder about how rising The literary themes of nature, place, and landscape sea levels will affect our lives in the future, just as play a major role in this country’s best-known lit- they are already affecting the lives of people in far- erature, particularly in the creative nonfiction of away island nations . Perhaps we speculate about the nineteenth and twentieth centuries . American how the growing global population of humans will poets, too, have made significant contributions feed itself in the coming centuries . Whatever our to environmental literature . Many of these writers perspective on issues pertaining to energy and wrote in response to historical developments, such innovation, in our increasingly technocratic society as the Industrial Revolution, that changed the phys- we tend to gravitate toward technical and techno- ical landscape of the young United States . Others logical solutions to our problems . Yet the topic of penned notable responses to environmental energy does not merely pertain to burning fossil destruction . Together, the literary works discussed fuels or devising new ways to harness the sun’s in this resource guide are intended to form a rep- rays . Energy, in short, is not merely an issue of sci- resentative, but not a comprehensive, sampling of ence and technology . An alternative does not have great American works of modern environmental to be a solution; it can also be a new perspective . literature . Energy use is a human issue, one that is intimately This section of the resource guide is intended connected to the way we live our lives and think to help you read and understand author Annie about our role here on this planet . Human beings are Dillard’s nonfiction book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek . meaning-making animals, not just problem-solv- After reading the book, and with the assistance of ers, and the topic of new alternatives in energy is this resource guide, you should be able to discuss not just a scientific and policy issue, but also an the literary form and thematic content of Pilgrim artistic and spiritual issue . Great writers can help at Tinker Creek in depth . Roughly two-thirds of us do this kind of thinking . Thus, one important this section of the resource guide consists of back- way to think about this year’s Academic Decathlon® ground information that will help you understand theme is through a humanistic approach, through the life and times of the author and the contex- the medium of literature, which enjoins us to see tual significance of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek . The the world through fresh eyes and to consider remaining third (approximately) consists of chap- alternative perspectives . The study of languages ter summaries and interpretation meant to broaden and literatures necessarily entails thinking other- and deepen your engagement with the book as you wise, or entertaining modes of thought other than read it . Each subsection can be read independently Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 10 GUIDE American philosopher/poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1859. The publication of Emerson’s essay Nature in 1836 led Ambrotype of Henry David Thoreau from to the emergence of nature as a major August 1861. Thoreau’s Walden became the theme in American literature. great American classic of nature writing.

(you may choose to jump to a section that interests book, that made nature a central topic of interest you) or in sequence, as an expository essay on for intellectuals of various kinds . We can trace the Annie Dillard and her best-known book . emergence of nature as a major theme in American The Natural History Essay literature to the publication of Emerson’s essay in 1836 . Emerson’s Nature investigates multiple ideas and the Romantic Movement about and definitions of nature, moving between In the early nineteenth century the development of the philosophical idealism of Neo-Platonism, the natural history essay, combined with the emer- which sees the natural environment as the expres- gent Romantic movement, caused a new kind of sion of deeper realities, and a more materialist writing to flourish in the young American republic, approach that sees nature as a spiritual and mate- particularly in New England . This emergent body rial resource to be enjoyed and appreciated by of literature tended to celebrate the intricacies people . Nature is in no way a work of environmen- of particular places and found meaning—often talism in the current sense of the term, for Emerson religious or transcendental meaning—in the work- had no interest in describing the negative effects ings of the natural world . By the early nineteenth of human activities on the natural world or urging century a body of writing about nature existed people to tread lightly . Yet Emerson’s call, on the in the English-speaking world . Naturalists such first page of Nature, for “an original relation to as William Bartram (1739–1823) and John James the universe” certainly inspired his disciple Henry Audubon (1785–1851) had written of nature’s won- David Thoreau (1817–62), who took a different ders on the North American continent, and the approach to the idea of nature than did his teacher, Englishman Gilbert White (1720–93) had written emphasizing instead the spiritual discipline of sim- The Natural History of Selborne, a detailed account plicity, physical labor, and paying careful attention of natural processes in the author’s small English to natural phenomena . region . Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature If Emerson’s Nature made the natural world a cen- It was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s (1803–82) idealis- tral topic in American intellectual life, it was tic essay Nature, originally published as a brief Thoreau’s Walden that would become the great Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 11 This 1840 engraving by Edward Goodall (1795–1870), Manchester, from Kersal Moor, is based on a painting by W. Wylde. The lush, natural scenery of the countryside provides a stark contrast to the polluted, chimney-filled sky of the industrialized city.

American classic of nature writing . Overwhelmingly environment, and serious intellectual inquiry in influential on the intellectual life of the United American literature . But nonfiction nature writing States, Walden has had an impact well beyond does not encompass all of American literature’s national borders and the boundaries of mod- discussion of these themes, nor does American ern environmentalism . It is a book that inspired literature contain all of the major statements on Mahatma Gandhi and Dr . Martin Luther King as the subject . Anglophone (English-speaking) poets well as several generations of post-World War II from a variety of national traditions have also cre- counter-cultural movements . The central theme ated powerful works of literary art that reflect on of Walden is the rich relationship between human the natural world . In the selection of short works beings and the natural environment . Thoreau con- included in section III of this resource guide, the stantly enjoins readers to open their eyes to natural emphasis is on well-known works of modern processes and their spiritual effects on the self . Our American and British poetry, ranging from two spiritual condition, Thoreau insists, reflects in our sonnets by the English poet William Wordsworth material lives—in the ways we make a living, eat, to recent poems by living Americans . These poems travel, and live . Material life, for Thoreau, is part have been selected to fit with this year’s curricular and parcel of spiritual life, and dedicating oneself theme . to a rigorous attention to simplicity and material minimalism can lead to spiritual uplift . Historical Context Subsequent writers have heeded Thoreau’s words . The Industrial Revolution is a phrase that denotes Annie Dillard, whose Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the an ongoing process of rapid technological long text selected for this year’s literature curricu- advancement accompanied by massive social, eco- lum, offers a twentieth-century reprise of the major nomic, and political change, beginning in Britain themes and ideas in Walden . Dillard’s writing amply in the mid-eighteenth century and continuing to demonstrates the ongoing currency of nature, the this day . Its long-term effects on the biophysi- Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 12 GUIDE cal environment of this planet, forms the major possible; in particular, the development of the historical context for English Romantic poetry, steam engine made human pursuits—from mining nineteenth-century American nature writing, and and manufacturing to travel—more efficient and modern environmentalism . With rapid and largely more environmentally destructive . Beginning in unplanned growth of cities, suburbs, factories, the late seventeenth century, scientists and innova- and the social problems that accompanied them, tors created steam engines of increasing efficiency . growing numbers of artists and intellectuals in Between 1763 and 1775 the Scotsman James Watt eighteenth-century and especially nineteenth-cen- created a steam engine efficient enough to replace tury Britain, and later in the United States, voiced animal labor (horses, in this case) in industrial pro- concerns about humanity’s transformation—and, duction (first mining, then other industries), thus often, destruction—of beloved landscapes and accelerating the Industrial Revolution . For, in time, ecosystems, such as woods, fields, and coastlines . steam engines would perform spectacular func- tions such as propelling steam locomotives and One well-known example of the way human efforts steamships . Steam engines were the first instance to harness energy have affected the environment of widespread automation, and as they became is the London smog (a word derived from “smoke” more available, innovators created ever-more effi- and “fog”) . Even before the Industrial Revolution cient ones . accelerated air pollution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, London’s foul air was the By the middle of the twentieth century industrial topic of much discussion . As the scholar Ken production, energy use, and the explosive growth Hiltner has discussed in a series of recent studies, of the human population was beginning to be per- people living in the London area long suspected ceived as an emergent global threat by scientists, a connection between the burning of sea coal (a writers, and policy-makers . The counter-cultural soft bituminous coal that produces a great deal social movements of the sixties and seventies of smoke) and the increasingly polluted air in the prepared the way for a wide variety of American region of the city . In the Middle Ages people on readers to think seriously about nature and the the east coast of England gathered sea coal (which environment in a new light . In the early sixties washed up on the coast, often from underwater Rachel Carson’s (1907–64) landmark book Silent coal deposits) to burn as fuel for cooking and heat . Spring had a major effect on public opinion about Over time London’s smog worsened, and with pollution, inciting the Kennedy administration to the development of the Industrial Revolution, the hold hearings about the use of chemical pesticides, burning of coal on an unprecedented level became while a number of well-publicized environmental a public health threat . Smog in some industri- disasters were transforming public opinion about al areas was occasionally so dense and lasting the anthropogenic impact on various aspects of the that many citizens had trouble breathing and in natural world . The next decade, the seventies, was some cases developed lung illnesses . The stagnant a time of rapidly increasing public awareness about and extremely unhealthy air that hovered over a host of environmental issues and increased gov- London on windless days was (rightly) blamed for ernment willingness to respond—to pollution, war, numerous health problems as early as the mid-sev- extinctions, and unchecked exploitation of natu- enteenth century 1. ral resources . The environmental sciences were focused increasingly on mitigating the human Smog is an early, local example of anthropogenic degradation of nature, and writers, artists, and climate change, the transformation of the natural intellectuals, as well as politicians were becoming world (in this case air) by human means . Other increasingly concerned about how to preserve and forms of human-induced environmental degrada- treasure the biosphere . tion proliferated as the Industrial Revolution gained Annie Dillard, the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, historical momentum . By the nineteenth century, this year’s long text selection (published 1974), the polluted Thames River, filthy streets, and sooty was born at the start of the post-WWII baby boom, facades of buildings reminded Britons daily of and her ideas and opinions were shaped in the the toll of the Industrial Revolution . The effects of post-war context . The late 1950s and 1960s in the Industrial Revolution motivated poets such as the United States were an era that saw the rise of William Wordsworth (1770–1850) to decry “what transformative social movements in reaction to man has made of man,” while writers of prose mainstream culture, society, and politics . Many fiction, such as Mary Shelley, wrote fantastic cau- of these movements were counter-cultural, such tionary stories, such as Frankenstein, in response as the Beats, the hippies, the back-to-the-landers, to these rapidly changing historical conditions . the Black Power and gay rights movements, femi- The ongoing discovery of new means of har- nism, the anti-war movement . This was a moment nessing energy made the Industrial Revolution when Americans, like some people living in other Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 13 Mammal Protection Act (1972), the Clean Water Act (1972), and major updates to the Clean Air Act (1967, 1970, 1977), among others . Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was published at a moment that can reasonably be designated as the peak of the twentieth-century environmental movement . Pilgrim was a timely book, and even if its primary focus was not on environmental advocacy, it was clearly motivated by the same forces that produced these noteworthy federal bills . Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is an erudite dialogue with classics, religion, and science; it is also a passionate response to the issues of the era in which it was written and published . The historical context of Pilgrim’s publication cannot be overstated, particularly with regard to the growth of the environmental movement in the United States, which profoundly influenced Dillard’s thinking about the natural world, created a national audience for her work, and provides a clear context for her con- tribution to literature . Nevertheless, her writings are not works of environmental advocacy in the tradition of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring or Peter Matthiessen’s Wildlife in America . Annie Dillard is less an environmentalist than a philosopher whose work harkens back to early modern thinkers engaged in what was then called natural theology, the study of the natural world for signs of divine Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, purpose . Natural theologians believed they were published in 1962. Silent Spring had a interpreting the mind of the deity; Dillard, too, major effect on public opinion about pollution and the environment. looks at the natural world for signs of spiritual significance . For her the environment is saturated with spiritual meaning, and her primary interest is not so much the human degradation of nature—the parts of the developed world (such as Sweden primary theme in books of environmental advo- and France), were becoming acutely aware of the cacy, such as Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature . crises that were being caused by the increasing Rather, Dillard explores the enormous potential for exploitation of the world’s resources . At the same spiritual self-discovery that is latent in the natural time the American public had become impatient world . with (and in many cases disgusted by) the Vietnam War, a losing military campaign in which weapons We should not assume that such a Thoreauvian and military technology caused an enormous loss book as Pilgrim bespeaks the kind of concern of human life, as well as immeasurable environ- for the fate of the environment characteristic of mental destruction in Southeast Asia . The human such pioneering works of environmentalism as and environmental effects of Agent Orange (an Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire and The Monkey herbicide and defoliant used by the U S. . military Wrench Gang, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, or during the war), for example, continue to be felt Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature . These writ- in Vietnam and are one instance of what the ers concentrate on the human destruction of the scholar Rob Nixon has termed “slow violence,” biophysical environment in an effort to raise con- the often-unremarked unfolding of environmental sciousness and mitigate such destruction . Dillard catastrophe in poor communities . does not share this primary focus; rather, she pur- sues her interest in biology, ecology, medicine, and In this context, Dillard’s profound personal reflec- perception in order to examine the material basis tions on nature’s spiritual value struck a timely for her own spirituality . chord . The United States federal government passed most of its landmark environmental leg- Dillard often seems to be talking to herself, work- islation in the seventies, including such bills as ing out religious puzzles and riddles, rather than the Endangered Species Act (1973), the Marine exhorting readers to take up arms against indus- Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 14 GUIDE President Richard Nixon, signing the Endangered Species Act of 1973 into law. The United States federal government passed most of its landmark environmental legislation in the seventies. AP Photo. trial modernity’s despoliation of the natural world . Ultimately, Dillard is more concerned with the Dillard is not truly an environmentalist, first and human condition—her own and her readers’ spir- foremost . As scholar Don Scheese argues: itual responsiveness to natural phenomena—than she is with the plight of the natural world . In her …to examine the work of Annie Dillard is to own words, “There’s usually a bit of nature in reveal both the power and the limitations what I write, but I don’t consider myself a nature of the term ‘nature writer ’. The genre has writer either ”. 3 This is a bit of an understatement, traditionally been defined as a first-person but there is more than a grain of truth here: Annie nonfiction narrative based on an appre- Dillard’s nonfiction books, and especially Pilgrim, ciative aesthetic response to a scientific approach nature and the environment not for their view of nature . Much of Dillard’s writing own sake but as vehicles for examining human meets this criterion . Other elements gen- spiritual experience . The same can be said of the erally considered important to a definition literary selections in the short works section fol- of nature writing include a celebration of a lowing the analysis of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek . Each particular place, an elegy to a lost or dimin- of these shorter works is centrally concerned with ished wilderness, a polemic directed at the interactions of humans with the environment, despoilers of nature, and an argument for but each examines those interactions through an biocentrism over anthropocentrism . These aesthetic lens—through the poetic reshaping of other criteria, however, have not been cen- language . tral concerns of Dillard’s, leading some critics to wonder whether she should right- Keywords ly be considered a nature writer 2. The Sublime Indeed, the ways in which Pilgrim departs from the tradition of nature writing seem more striking than The sublime is a conceptual category (complex the ways in which it fits within that tradition . The definitional idea) from the philosophical discourse book’s intellectual cosmopolitanism (it engages of aesthetics used to describe an overwhelming with writers and thinkers from various languages, sensory experience in which the perceiver is nations, and traditions) sets it apart from the bulk awe-struck and emotionally transported by an of American nature writing . immensely powerful experience of the natural Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 15 The Gothic “Gothic” originally referred to the early Germanic Goths, who overran much of Europe (including large parts of the Roman Empire) . This term was later used to refer to medieval themes . Gothic art contains danger, violence, the occult, exoticism, and other elements tied to the unconscious . Gothic art tends to be lurid, containing morbid and erotic themes . It is marked by an emphasis on the uncan- ny (strangeness in that which is familiar) and the exotic . In literature the gothic is a mode—a set of plot elements, themes, and motifs—that crosses genres (including novels, poems, short stories, plays, and movies) . The Gothic first arose as a major aesthetic mode in the arts (as opposed to architecture, in which the Gothic means something different) in the eighteenth century as a cultural reaction to that era’s obsession with Enlightenment ideals such as neo-classicism, rationalism, empiri- cism, strict intellectual clarity, and the celebration of bourgeois values . In gothic literature the protag- onist often finds herself or himself pursued by a mysterious antagonist with occult and violent tendencies who is cruel and driven by lust . The setting quite frequently evokes the Middle Ages—castles, crypts, and caves abound in gothic literature— Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1817, and also France and Spain . Gothic novels include painted by Caspar David Friedrich. For The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole, The nature writers, the sublime landscape can both cause and reflect powerful feelings. Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, by Ann Radcliffe, Vathek, by William Beckford, The Monk, by Matthew Gregory Lewis, and Frankenstein, by world, such as an alpine or arctic landscape, a Mary Shelley . The gothic stories of Edgar Allan storm at sea, a cataract or waterfall, or anything Poe include “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” among others . Gothic poems containing immense energy and the power to include “Christabel,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, destroy the perceiver . The effects of such an expe- and “Lamia,” by John Keats . rience are understood as aesthetic, spiritual, and psychological: the perceiver of a sublime object Industrial Revolution (often a landscape or vista) undergoes a kind of The Industrial Revolution refers to the historical inner struggle and emerges enriched by the expe- transformation of the material world that was rience, more in tune with nature than previously . In fueled by the growth of new technologies, such as his 1764 treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry into the the compound steam engine, high-carbon steel, Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, and the internal combustion engine, and new the philosopher Edmund Burke distinguished the methods of production—particularly mass produc- sublime from the “merely” beautiful and pictur- tion . Beginning in Britain in the eighteenth century esque . The sublime is a particularly powerful and spreading rapidly to other European nations aesthetic experience defined by terror and awe . and the United States, the Industrial Revolution Sublime scenes or works of art are characterized saw the development of myriad new devices (such by extremes, irregularity, and a correspondence as the cotton gin, the steam locomotive, and rail- between natural features and forces and deep roads, steamships, and factories) and methods of emotions connected to the psychological uncon- production (mass production, mills, mines) . The scious . For nature writers, the sublime landscape phrase is used to describe the eighteenth- and nine- can both cause powerful emotional feeling and teenth-century expansion of production fueled by reflect powerful feelings the writer may already capitalism and its various markets and industries, be experiencing . The beautiful, on the other hand, as well as the political hegemony of the European is distinguished by calm regularity and aesthetic bourgeoisie and the exploitation of non-European pleasure .4 peoples for labor and natural resources . Some Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 16 GUIDE results of the Industrial Revolution were the depop- modernists include Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, ulation of rural regions, the corresponding birth D H. . Lawrence, William Faulkner, the late Joseph and expansion of cities, air and water pollution, Conrad, T S. . Eliot, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, and population expansion . and Gertrude Stein . American Transcendentalism Postmodernism Transcendentalism was a distinctly American lit- Postmodernism is a term that initially was used erary, philosophical, and religious movement that to describe a shift in post-World-War II creative began in 1836 with the formation of a Unitarian dis- art and architecture that strove toward a new cussion group known as the Transcendental Club, aesthetic sensibility in reaction to modernism . In composed of Boston and Concord intellectuals . some instances, postmodernism continued the Neither a coherent ideology nor a religious sect, experimentation of modernism, but in most cases Transcendentalism was a movement in the intellec- it went in a markedly different direction . The term tual life of the young America that remained a force “postmodernism” is now more commonly used until the Civil War . The Transcendentalists empha- to describe art produced after the late 1960s . sized the individual’s ability to apprehend truths Postmodern art tends to put much less empha- that lay higher or deeper than mere experience sis on universal knowledge than did modernism . could garner . They rejected the rationalism then Postmodernists stress the importance of the small- prevalent at Harvard University, preferring instead scale—the local, particular, and mutable as opposed the ideas (coming out of Germany and Britain) of to what the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard idealist philosophers and Romantic poets . Major has called the metanarratives (“grands recits,” in components of Transcendentalism were a reval- French) of modernism . In postmodernism there is uation of intuition and insight and a religious often an emphasis placed on the role of ideology, cosmopolitanism that included appreciation for including the ideology of art, over aesthetic form . Eastern thought (Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, Postmodern literary texts often emphasize pas- and to some extent Taoism and Confucianism) . tiche (mixed artistic media), historical context, the Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose short book (or essay) local (as opposed to the international), and uncer- Nature was published in that year, is the most tainty as to setting, narrative persona, and plot . A famous of the Transcendentalists . Others include postmodernist novel is likely to be an anti-novel Bronson Alcott, E E. . Channing, Margaret Fuller, and a postmodernist hero an anti-hero . Some the- Elizabeth Peabody, and Henry David Thoreau . orists have linked postmodernism to the dazzling Modernism complexity of late-twentieth-century civilization, in which traditional social and cultural structures Modernism is a movement in literature and the arts and relations break down, and a general sense of that began in Western European countries (partic- historical vertigo is produced . Much postmodern ularly Britain, France, and Italy) just before World art evinces a sense of vertigo, disorientation, or War I and lasted until just after World War II . Literary displacement . modernism is characterized by an emphasis on his- Creative Nonfiction torical discontinuity and a commitment to newness; by technical experimentation and innovation on all Creative nonfiction is nonfiction writing that uses levels (including, in poetry, the widespread use of the craft of the fiction writer or novelist, includ- free verse, and in prose stream-of-consciousness) ing such techniques as personification (especially and by the development of new aesthetic values; of animals), anthropomorphism (near-personifi- movements such as Futurism, Surrealism, and cation), the development of a narrative persona, Expressionism; and a concern for the autonomy episodic narration, irony, apostrophe, symbolism, of the artist . Modernism was also characterized by and so on . avant-gardism (an aesthetic revolutionary spirit), Environmentalism the rediscovery and rewriting of mythology, and an emphasis on the psychology of everyday life . Environmentalism refers to any explicit concern for Modernists tended to reject or critique the cultural the effects of human activity on the natural world . hegemony of the bourgeoisie, even if most were Environmentalism also describes a widespread themselves of middle-class origin . The alienation twentieth-century movement to limit, mitigate, or of the individual (from society, institutions, or solve problems caused by the human degradation traditions) is a major modernist theme . One of of nature galvanized by concerns about pollution . the notable features of modernism is a marked Nature Writing interest in “the Orient,” particularly in Japanese, Chinese, and Indian art, which some modernists Nature writing refers to nonfiction essays of vary- found inspirational . Notable British and American ing lengths, particularly those written after the Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 17 late eighteenth century, that are characterized by a profound concern for a particular place and its biota and generally accompanied by spiritual or theological reflections (usually non-denomination- al) . Nature writing is a highly evolved form of the natural history essay in which a reliable, highly present narrator introduces the reader to a set of natural attributes that characterize a particular place or region . Nature writing tends to rely heavily on the author’s unsystematic study of natural phenomena, often called “natural history,” signifying an approach to thinking about the natural world that can be traced to European Renaissance intel- Annie Dillard, lectuals seeking to understand the mind of God by author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. interpreting the Creation for signs and symbols of divine intent . Nature writing is a privileged form of discourse associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson, the names of those with whom she’s been compared leap out: Virginia Woolf, Gerard Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, John Burroughs, Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, William Mary Hunter Austin, Edward Abbey, and Annie Blake, John Donne . Small wonder there Dillard . hasn’t been a day since the publication of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in 1974 when Annie 5 (1974) – Summary Dillard was out of print . After four decades, Dillard remains a significant On May 5, 1975, a young writer by the name of Annie figure in the pantheon of American writers . Dillard won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek . First published Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is frequently taught in col- just over a year earlier, with excerpts appearing in lege English and Religious Studies departments, the literary magazines Harper’s and The Atlantic Environmental Studies Programs, and creative even earlier, Pilgrim was Dillard’s second book writing courses . If Pilgrim has become a staple of (her first book was a collection of poems) and was American literature in universities and colleges, the April selection of the Book-of-the-Month club . outside of academia it continues to be read by Not only did Pilgrim sell quite well, but its widely individuals and book clubs around the world . appealing subject matter, sympathetic narrative The scope of Dillard’s reputation is now global, although her most ardent admirers tend to be edu- voice, vividly described episodes, and superbly cated North Americans . This global success might crafted prose style won Annie Dillard immediate seem surprising, for Pilgrim is a book of personal critical acclaim and a devoted following of readers meditations that mixes natural history (observa- among the general public . Soon Dillard began to tions of specific phenomena in the natural world) receive fan mail, and offers to write for the movies, with spiritual reflection . Described by its author as television, and theater poured in . She was invited “a theology book,” Pilgrim mixes religious specula- to appear on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny tion with memoir, natural history, science writing, Carson . Not yet thirty years old, Annie Dillard was and intellectual history . It is an episodic dialogue a literary celebrity . She has remained one ever between the self (a compelling, amusing, and since, with the reputation of her most famous book sympathetic first-person narrator), the biophysical (Pilgrim) growing and expanding with time . Today environment, and a large number of living and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek stands as a classic work of dead thinkers, from theologians to scientists to cre- twentieth-century American nonfiction . ative writers . The narrative moves from episode to The reverence that many of her admirers have for episode with no real plot and no genuine character Annie Dillard and her writings is fervent . As Mary development beyond that of the narrative persona . Cantwell wrote in a New York Times article pub- How is this book relevant to the topic of new alter- lished in 1992: natives in energy? Although Annie Dillard’s writing To her fans, Annie Dillard is an avatar, or at has little to say about power plants, climate change, the very least … ‘the Mother Teresa of her fossil fuel use, or solar power, her writing is all particular genre ’. To critics, many of them about energy, both in terms of the ideas it enter- anyway, she is an occasion for rhapso- tains and its writing style . Not only does she write dy—if not overkill . Browse through a stack about vibrancy and vitality in the natural world, of reviews from this newspaper alone and but her writing style itself crackles with energy Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 18 GUIDE and intensity . This is a book that investigates the spiritual connection between humans and the biophysical environment that we inhabit; as such, it is an inquiry into what makes people intellec- tually and spiritually aware . The front matter (the pages in the book that come before the first page of actual text) contains an epigraph (a brief quo- tation) from the Ancient Greek writer Heraclitus, known for his thoughts about the ever-changing nature of reality . The epigraph reads: “It ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out ”. 6 Thus Dillard introduces the reader to her own writing by invoking the element of fire (the classical elements were earth, air, fire, and water) . Immediately, then, even before the first sentence of the first chapter, fire initiates the reader into two of Dillard’s great themes: energy and transformation . The immediate impression of the epigraph is one of mystery: what do these words from Heraclitus mean? What is “it”? Life? God? Energy? These words resonate throughout the rest of the book, just as any good epigraph should, lending the chapters that follow an air of mystery and a sense of classical reflection Canadian nature writer Farley Mowat. Like on the place of humanity in the universe . Mowat, Annie Dillard drew on her early Annie Dillard Biography interest in nature in all of her writings. Annie Dillard is the nom de plume (pen name) of an author who was born Meta Ann Doak on and her youthful diary reveals a taste for the April 30, 1945, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania . Her French Romantics Paul-Marie Verlaine and Arthur parents, Frank and Pam, had three daughters . The Rimbaud, World War I poets Rupert Brooke and eldest, who went by “Annie,” was named after Wilfred Owen, and the modernist poets Edna St . her grandmother, Meta Waltenburger Doak . The Vincent Millay and T S. . Eliot . Not surprisingly, the Doak family was prosperous yet counter-cultural first book Dillard would publish (just before the in an era when mass culture (television, radio, and publication of Pilgrim) was a poetry collection advertising) was creating a new cultural uniformi- bearing the title Tickets for a Prayer Wheel, and ty in the United States . In this context the Doaks throughout her career a dynamic tension between were ideologically liberal (politically left leaning) poetry and prose has animated Dillard’s work . Her and encouraged their daughters to be intellectual- prose tends to be pithy and economical, marked by ly independent and to pursue their own interests careful word choice and efficient syntax . Many of rather than fulfilling conventional expectations 7 . the best passages she has written have the rhythm Frank Doak’s favorite books were Mark Twain’s of a poem or, on occasion, of a good joke . She cer- Life on the Mississippi and Jack Kerouac’s On the tainly writes with abundant good humor . Road, the latter of which he discussed frequently The young Annie Doak was an avid naturalist, with his eldest daughter . In addition to reading and collecting rocks and insects and poring over The discussing classic American literature, one of the Field Book of Ponds and Streams . Reading about family’s favorite pastimes was memorizing jokes the natural world, as well as investigating it, kept and sharing ideas about how best to deliver them, her occupied throughout her childhood and would an attention to the nuances of language and expres- remain a primary interest of the mature writer . This sion that trained the ear of the young woman who aspect of her early years connects her to other would become the author Annie Dillard . As you highly influential environmental writers of the may notice, her writings contain many memorable twentieth century, such as Rachel Carson (author one-liners, not all of them punch-lines to jokes, but of Silent Spring and The Sea Around Us) and the often memorable epigrammatic statements . Canadian Farley Mowat (author of A Whale for the As a child, the future Pulitzer Prize-winning author Killing and Never Cry Wolf) . Like them, the mature was—like any other great writer—an avid and Annie Dillard draws on her early interest in nature voracious reader . Above all she loved poetry, in all of her writings . Her books frequently rely on Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 19 detailed observations of natural phenomena and painstakingly examine their personal and spiritual significance . How best to find meaning in nature? Can biology and religion be reconciled, if at all? How should a careful observer respond to the violence and brutality of the universe? Again and again she returns to these questions, always with sincerity, intense curiosity, a willingness to entertain multiple perspectives, and a host of intellectual forebears . More than any other of Dillard’s books, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is replete with natural history observations and vignettes, tidbits about biology, ecology, and ethology . In addition to natural history, the young Annie Doak took a primary interest in Christianity, a religion to which she has been attached all her life . Although her parents were not diligent churchgoers, Annie found Sunday school and religious services at Shadyside Presbyterian Church and at religious summer camps personally meaningful . But she always had doubts, and her questioning style of intellect would not allow her to remain a follower for long . When she temporarily left the church as a teen (she would later describe herself as “wild”), her minister brought her back into the fold by loan- ing her the writings of C S. . Lewis (1898–1963) 8. Her particular style of Christian religiosity, like that of C S. . Lewis, involves an intensely intellectual dimension, and it connects her to a long tradition of intellectual theologians, from Augustine of Lee Smith (left) and Annie Dillard talk to writer-in-residence Colin Wilson at Hippo (also known as St . Augustine, 354–430 ce) Hollins College (now Hollins University) in to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) . Unlike Roanoke sometime in the mid-1960s when Lewis, however, Dillard has never been an evan- the two future writers were students. gelizer, or one who wishes to spread the word and Photo courtesy of Hollins University. convert others . Instead, she emphasizes mystery, awe, and a personal spirituality, an approach that has been very appealing to readers who do not short story) . Annie Dillard would win the Pulitzer necessarily share her faith . Prize . This is a remarkable record of literary accom- After high school Annie Doak chose to attend plishment for any undergraduate institution, and Hollins College for women in Roanoke, Virginia, it is well worth remembering that in the middle an institution known at the time for its challenging decades of the twentieth century young women academic curriculum and creative writing program . were just beginning to have the same opportuni- At this time (the mid-sixties) Hollins had a lively, ties—in higher education, athletics, professional accomplished faculty (of male professors) and a careers, and social life—as young men . As Nancy very talented student body . In fact, the intensely C . Parrish examines in her book Lee Smith, Annie charged intellectual atmosphere at Hollins pro- Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers, duced an unusual number of successful writers Hollins College was an institution that did an and scholars . Among Doak’s contemporaries in the exceptional job of developing its students’ intel- class of 1967 were such future literary luminaries lectual and artistic talents .9 At Hollins Annie Dillard as Lee Marshall Smith, who would later become shone . In her junior year she was selected for Phi a celebrated writer of fiction, and feminist liter- Beta Kappa . ary scholars Anne Goodwyn Jones and Lucinda Hardwick MacKethan . After college, Smith would At the end of her sophomore year at Hollins Annie win many literary awards, including two John Dos Doak married her writing professor, Richard Henry Passos Awards for Fiction, the Lila Wallace Award, Wilde Dillard, who would be the first of her three the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction, and two husbands (she divorced him in 1975 but kept his O . Henry Awards (Smith’s preferred genre is the name) . Dillard was a professor and creative writer Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 20 GUIDE who wrote poetry, novels, and criticism and was Western Washington University) and a novelist . an aficionado of horror films . (Annie Dillard’s fas- Although they had a daughter, Cody Rose, their cination with what we might call the gothic side marriage was of short duration . In 1988, after of nature may have been influenced by her hus- having moved to Connecticut, Dillard divorced band ). Dillard’s influence on his young wife was Clevidence and married Robert Richardson, whose enormous, as she herself has explicitly confirmed . biography of Thoreau she greatly admired . They Their relationship undoubtedly fostered her intel- met after she sent him fan mail . Theirs was a lit- lectual growth and established certain clearly erary relationship from the beginning . For many recognizable themes in her writings 10. years Dillard has spent her summers on Cape Cod After graduating from Hollins in 1967, Annie Dillard (along with a host of other writers and artists), earned a master’s degree in English literature there and the setting of her second novel, Provincetown, as well, writing her thesis on “Walden Pond and Massachusetts, reflects her abiding interest in this Thoreau” (her thesis title) . In this forty-page essay region . she discusses Walden pond itself as a kind of lim- Annie Dillard remains prominent in the world inal space between heaven and earth, a focal point of American letters and continues to write new in Thoreau’s thinking that links the material world books . She has written stories and two novels (The with the spiritual . Dillard’s interest in Thoreau and Living, 1992, and The Maytrees, 2007), a prize-win- his writing has been a lifelong fascination, and her ning collection of short essays (Teaching a Stone to books often invoke his work . In the post-college Talk), a memoir (An American Childhood), several era of her life she also published poetry in literary books on writing (The Writing Life; Encounters with magazines such as The Atlantic and the American Chinese Authors), and several more nonfiction Scholar . After several post-college years of search- books that explore spiritual and scientific issues ing and striving in various artistic media (she (such as Holy the Firm, 1977, Dillard’s personal took up painting and continued to write), Dillard favorite, and For the Time Being, 1999) . Reviews of caught pneumonia in 1971 and nearly died . This her work continue to be published in major news- near-death experience changed her outlook on life; papers and magazines . indeed, her subsequent writing (all of her major work) is obsessed with mortality . She decided to Dillard’s Literary Influences write a book; she also embarked on a series of Writers are influenced consciously by those they camping trips in western Virginia, generally alone, admire and emulate as well as subconsciously keeping a journal religiously . This was the genesis or unconsciously by prior writers whose works of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which remains Annie Dillard’s most celebrated book . are “in the air” or part of the zeitgeist (a German word meaning “the spirit of the times”) . The poet The enormous success of Pilgrim took its author and playwright William Shakespeare admired and off guard, and she struggled to come to terms emulated his medieval forebear Geoffrey Chaucer, with her new-found celebrity . In the aftermath but he also responded in his works to his contem- of this success, with copies of Pilgrim selling poraries Christopher Marlowe, Benjamin Jonson, exceptionally well, numerous positive reviews, Thomas Kidd, and Michel de Montaigne . The and with her earlier poetry collection receiving English novelist Henry Fielding harkened back favorable reviews as well, Dillard’s literary rep- to the Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes, utation was firmly established . But this did not but he also engaged in his fiction with the nov- mean that she had found stability in her life . After els of his contemporary Samuel Richardson as divorcing her husband, the young author chose well as with the politics of his era . Henry David to accept a position as scholar-in-residence at Thoreau responded to the writings of Ralph Waldo Western Washington University in Bellingham, Emerson while also exploring Buddhist and Hindu Washington, having been attracted by the region’s themes . And modern environmental writers, from natural beauty, which combined coastal waters Edward Abbey to Annie Dillard and Terry Tempest and high mountains . She would hold this position Williams, have been deeply influenced by the from 1975 to 1979 and again from 1981 to 1983 . writings of John Muir, John Burroughs, Rachel Annie Dillard’s fame led to offers of employ- Carson, Peter Matthiessen, and other American ment from other institutions of higher learning, writers who derived inspiration from the biophysi- and in 1979 and then from 1983 to 2004 Dillard cal environment . The latter writers were all deeply was Distinguished Visiting Professor at Wesleyan concerned about the human impact on specific University in Middletown, Connecticut . In places, landscapes, or ecosystems . In this they dif- Washington state she married Gary Clevidence, fer in sensibility from Annie Dillard, whose major an anthropologist at Fairhaven College (part of commitment is to the spiritual condition of the self . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 21 of Romanticism . Solitude is a major theme in Romantic writing, and in The Reveries Rousseau describes his walks in his native region (Geneva, Switzerland, and its environs) . The book, which was never completed, is organized into ten “walks .” The narrator addresses the reader as an interlocu- tor, a familiar “I” or narrative persona sharing his profoundest thoughts . Like Rousseau, Dillard employs an ever-present narrative persona, the “I” who addresses the reader, who recounts episodes from her quotidian life in rural western Virginia while meditating on the workings of nature . Both writers employ an intensely personal narrative persona, a speaker or voice that creates the impression of an intimate conversation or even, at times, a window into the author’s innermost thoughts . We should not be fooled, however, by this literary device (the con- fessional narrative persona), for it is an effect of the writer’s craft and every bit as artificial as the narrative voice of a novel . Also like Rousseau, Dillard organizes each of her chapters around a central idea . Many of these chapters also begin with an outing or walk . Each is also a freestanding essay in the etymological sense of the term . The essai, which translates from the French as an “attempt” or “venture,” is a literary form developed by another great philoso- Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau pher, Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) . Montaigne’s (1712–78). Rousseau’s The Reveries of “essais,” or essays, are brief, personal, quite sub- the Solitary Walker, originally published in jective reflections on topics that vacillate between French in 1782, had a significant influence the mundane and the profound 11. Dillard follows on Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. suit in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, each chapter of which is a freestanding essay, albeit one linked to each other chapter . (In fact, several chapters Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a book in dialogue with were published as freestanding essays before the many writers, living and dead (mostly the latter), book’s publication .) Both Montaigne and Rousseau as well as with the fact of life itself and all its stag- were deeply interested in nature and human nature es—birth, growth, procreation, suffering, injury, throughout their lives, and their writings reflect illness, and death . While the influence of prior writ- this interest . Dillard’s writings harken back to the ers on Dillard’s work is far too rich a subject to be writings of both of these eminent philosophers . explored in great depth here, and we certainly cannot catalogue all of the extra-literary influences on Many other literary influences can be discerned in her writing, we will look at two examples of literary the text of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; Dillard alludes influence (neither of them very obvious) before to or cites philosophers, theologians, novelists, moving on, in the next section, to a consideration dramatists, essayists, and poets . Indeed, Dillard’s of the enormous influence of Henry David Thoreau . erudition has an immense scope . But a very important body of literature that the book also One of the books to which Pilgrim owes a debt engages directly is nature writing . From Gilbert is The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, originally White’s Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, published in French, in 1782 (as Les Reveries du published in 1789, to Thoreau’s Walden, Henry Promeneur Solitaire), by the great philosopher Beston’s The Outermost House, and, much more Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) . Rousseau is recently, Rick Bass’s The Book of Yaak, nature writ- widely considered one of the most important and ers have placed great emphasis on the similarities influential writers and thinkers of the eighteenth and interconnectedness between human beings century, and he bridges the historical transition and the non-human world while also decrying the between the Age of Enlightenment and the Age human destruction of landscapes and ecosystems . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 22 GUIDE Portrait of Michel de Montaigne, one of the great writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne’s essays, which were brief, personal, quite subjective reflections on topics that vacillate between the mundane and the profane, had a notable influence on Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

As discussed in the “Keywords” section, nature writing derives from the natural history essay, a nonfiction genre that has flourished since the Enlightenment . The American Transcendentalists put their stamp on this genre in the middle decades Title page from the first edition of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854). Pilgrim at of the nineteenth century . Ralph Waldo Emerson Tinker Creek is frequently and justifiably and his younger friend and student Henry David compared with Walden, a major influence Thoreau, especially, made nature writing a sig- on the development of Dillard’s thinking. nificant part of American literature, and their works, especially Emerson’s Nature and Thoreau’s Walden, resonate everywhere in Dillard’s work, Pilgrim was first published . In all her writings one from her master’s thesis to Pilgrim and beyond . gets the sense that Dillard learned much from the The narrator in Pilgrim explicitly states her inten- crotchety pencil-maker’s son from Concord but tion: to write “a meteorological journal of the also strove mightily to move beyond his vision of mind,” which is a phrase borrowed explicitly from harmony between nature and mankind . Walden the Journal of Henry David Thoreau, as she also exemplifies American Transcendentalism, with its points out to the reader in Chapter One . idealism, energetic sermonizing, and optimism . Pilgrim is frequently and justifiably compared with For Thoreau the material world and the workings Walden, a major influence on the development of nature are reflections of a great, all-encompass- of Dillard’s thinking and on her best-known book . ing Mind—the mind of a universal deity (it is no At Hollins, Dillard wrote her master’s thesis on accident the founder of Transcendentalism, Ralph Walden, and she has never lost sight of the author Waldo Emerson, was a Unitarian minister) . who is perhaps this country’s most prominent Like her guru Thoreau, Dillard writes about her voice of environmentalism and political dissidence . observations of natural phenomena and then It is worth noting that Walden, a book that is full of reflects philosophically on those observations; this theological reflections, was selling well at the time is the rhythm of both writers’ works . But whereas Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 23 the tradition for nature writers had been to seek Notwithstanding her different approach to appre- harmony between the mind of the narrator and the ciating and describing natural phenomena, Annie phenomena observed, Dillard takes a very different Dillard’s commitment to the thought and writing of path by insisting on the shocking, frightful, and Henry David Thoreau goes well beyond her under- even horrifying dimensions of nature and human- graduate and graduate studies . She is a lifelong ity’s relationship to it . She starkly reminds the student of Thoreau, and Pilgrim is by far her most reader of just how violent and uncaring the natural Thoreauvian book . Thus, it comes as no surprise world can be by describing natural phenomena that Annie Dillard’s favorite biography—of any that do not fit with conventional notions of nature author, by any author—is Henry Thoreau: a Life of as a happy, green space . Her vision is darker, the Mind, by Robert D . Richardson, Jr 12. starker, and far more disturbing than Thoreau’s or Emerson’s . Dillard reminds the reader of the often Theology and Theodicy sinister role humanity plays in transforming the Annie Dillard’s religious thinking and beliefs have natural world, sometimes with wonderful, even been discussed by readers, journalists, and schol- miraculous results, and sometimes to the opposite ars for several decades, and representatives of effect . But more frequently she describes the inex- different religious groups have attempted to claim plicable violence of animals, insects, and human her as one of their own . But her theology is very beings . much her own, a mish-mash of different traditions, In part this near-obsession with violence and pre- Christian, Jewish (she particularly likes Hasidism), dation (which we will examine in Pilgrim) owes a and Islam (the Islamic mysticism known as Sufism debt to the idea of the sublime, which is a theory is near to her heart), and her manner of presenting of aesthetic experience (defined in the “Keywords” it belongs very much to the realm of art, not orga- section) that emphasizes the role of terror and nized religion . She draws on the Bible, religious awe in the human response to powerful natural history, esoteric religious movements, mysticism, phenomena as well as the role of the unconscious and general knowledge of the history of religions . in that response . But Dillard does not approach Nowhere does she proselytize (attempt to convert the sublime in the traditional Romantic vein—she her readers to her own faith) or even assert any eschews the grand vistas and vast landscapes of particular religious sect or dogma . Rather, she her Romantic predecessors . Instead, she describes draws on the history of religions, particularly the less visible natural phenomena and the workings Abrahamic religions—Christianity, Judaism, and of the biosphere on a much smaller scale—often, in Islam . fact, at the level of microscopic phenomena . Dillard’s observations about phenomena as simple While Dillard clearly admires Thoreau and fre- and universal as a bird dropping from the sky or quently invokes his writings, she also takes a the behavior of predators tend to be presented as very different approach to nature’s significance . food for thought in a world without spiritual or reli- Whereas for Thoreau the workings of the natural gious certainty (“We don’t know what’s going on world are basically uplifting and invigorating, for here”), directed at an audience willing to wonder Dillard they are mesmerizingly weird and awe-in- along with her . The diversity of Dillard’s audience spiring (and sometimes simply awful) . Everywhere (her readers range from the devout to atheists Thoreau looks in the natural world, at trees, ants, and agnostics) seems to confirm the notion that creeks, ponds, leaves, seasons, and bean fields, he she is a wildly independent theologian, a sort of sees correspondences between the world of nature preacher for the unorganized general populace, and the world of human beings . Annie Dillard dif- for some of her strongest adherents are atheists, fers strikingly; instead, paying special attention agnostics, and dissenters . One can read any or all to those aspects of nature that horrify, astonish, of her books for pleasure and profit without adher- and surprise the human observer, she points to ing to any particular doctrine . Her primary interest nature’s violence, unpredictability, and complete is not so much religion as it is general spirituality, indifference to people . She observes natural phe- and in this her theological thinking can be seen nomena and reflects on what she observes . In this as an extension of American Transcendentalism’s Pilgrim resembles other works of American nature interest in and openness to Eastern religions and writing, but whereas traditional nature writers philosophies—an internationalism that was devel- sought harmony between the mind of the narrator oped further by the so-called Beats of the 1950s, and the phenomena observed, here Dillard throws including Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and others a wrench in the works, instead emphasizing the whom Dillard read and admired from an early age . grotesque and incomprehensible dimensions of Dillard’s thinking cannot be contained or labeled the natural world . comfortably with mainstream religious categories . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 24 GUIDE Beat writer Jack Kerouac, right, with his friend and road companion Neal Cassady in 1952. Dillard read and admired Kerouac and other Beat writers, and they influenced her theological thinking.

Her sphere of reference, from the classics to eso- moves forward by means of exploring existential teric theology to natural history and cutting-edge questions, shocking descriptions of natural phe- medical science, separates her interests sharply nomena, and profound theological probing . She from those of popular religious movements . It offers no easy answers for theologically curious would be fair to say that Dillard, like her favorite readers . The close attention she pays to natural poet Emily Dickinson, experienced an intense and horrors (such as ants eating chicks in the nest) is a intensely personal spiritual awakening that ani- departure from the generally rather sunny, roman- mates her writing and her efforts to exhort readers tic notions of mainstream American nature writers . to wake up as spiritual beings and pay closer atten- In her other writings, such as Holy the Firm (1977) tion to the inexplicable dimensions of the here Dillard describes horrific events and asks how any and now . In Dillard’s case this spiritual awakening god could permit such things to happen . derives from her almost-deadly bout of pneumonia in 1971, but its roots are of course buried much Dillard has described herself as having been “spir- more deeply in her childhood . itually promiscuous,” and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek lives up to this description . In addition to framing A major theme in Dillard’s work is the existence of evil in the universe . More precisely, she wonders the book in terms of her own interest in being an how in the world monstrous violence and horrific anchorite (a medieval religious ascetic, general- accidents could be permitted by any divine intel- ly female, dedicated to thought and prayer), she ligence . The question of how the divine can allow frequently mentions Christianity and the Bible, bad things to happen to good people is an old one; Buddhism, Judaism, Islam (particularly Sufism, it motivated John Milton to attempt to “justify the or Islamic mysticism), and the spiritual practices ways of God to men” in his epic poem Paradise of the Inuits (“Eskimos”) . Dillard continues to be a Lost . The term for this kind of inquiry is “theodi- religious seeker . Although she converted to Roman cy,” and it forms a major theme in all the writings Catholicism in mid-life, her official website pro- of Annie Dillard . In Pilgrim, Dillard’s theodicy claims her religious affiliation as “none ”. Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 25 Organization and Structure the yearly cycle of the book; rather, it lies in the background of each chapter, occasionally moving Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a carefully crafted work to the foreground . While Dillard frequently—perva- of creative nonfiction, every bit as deliberately sively even—refers to natural phenomena, from a organized and attentive to language and structure gibbous moon to the mating habits of the praying as a novel, such as James Joyce’s A Portrait of mantis, she makes no effort to convince the reader the Artist as a Young Man or William Faulkner’s of her affinity for wilderness . The wild for her can Absalom, Absalom! When we approach it as read- be found everywhere and anywhere in nature; it ers, we should do so with the same mindset we is not a place or a space so much as a way of per- might adopt in reading great works of fiction . We ceiving the natural world . The overall impression should be attentive to the nuances of expression conveyed by the writing is one of literary “saunter- and remain constantly aware that, in the words ing,” as Thoreau defines the term in his great essay of the cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan, “the “Walking”: being equally at home everywhere 13. medium is the message ”. In other words, a work Dillard saunters around the landscape observing of creative writing never simply tries to convey natural phenomena and reflecting on her own spir- content or teach us something; it also needs to be itual condition . seen as a work of art in its own right, much like a statue or a painting . Thus, in sitting down to read Like Walden, too, the text of Pilgrim was culled Annie Dillard, we should not merely pay attention from a larger body of work—in both cases the to what she says, but to how she says it . As we authors’ journals . And while Dillard nowhere men- continue to read, we should look for patterns of tions it, another similarity between the two books thought and expression, repeated words, images, is the somewhat suburban setting of both . Neither and phrases . We should also be willing to use ref- Concord nor Tinker Creek is very far from a city erence books—a dictionary or an encyclopedia (or (Boston and Roanoke) and neither could reason- both)—when we come across concepts that are ably be called a wild place . In both instances the new to us . focus on an interstitial place, an overlooked spot, leads the author to meditate on the unseen profun- What we might call the architecture of Pilgrim, its dities of everyday life, human and non-human . In structure and organization, follows a deliberate both texts the natural cycles—seasonal, migration- and traditionally meditative pattern . As Linda L . al, diurnal—form a kind of low-level background Smith points out in her 1991 book Annie Dillard, rhythm, not a front-and-center order or scheme . the first seven chapters of Pilgrim follow the theological tradition of a via positiva, a positive path (or Narrative Persona way) toward understanding the beauty and power Every story has a storyteller, and this dimension of of the natural world (synonymous in traditional Pilgrim stands out as one of its most memorable Christianity with the Creation) . The second half of features . Annie Dillard’s voice is so distinctive and the book, Chapters Eight through Fifteen, follows fresh that one often gets the impression of having a traditional via negativa, or negative path, which a conversation with a brilliant storyteller . Dillard’s investigates the horrors of this world and enter- voice is casual, irreverent, and at times howlingly tains the question of why any god would allow funny . Her voice seems, at times, to whisper and these horrors to persist, much less create them . at other times to shout . The net effect of an hour This scheme, however, exaggerates the differ- of reading Pilgrim is to feel that one has just made ences between the two halves of the book, which the acquaintance of a deeply curious person with are very similar to each other . In fact, the entire a highly developed sense of wonder . As Robert narrative is so episodic—moving from episode to Finch and John Elder point out in The Norton Book episode, vignette to vignette, without a definite of Nature Writing, “Annie Dillard possesses one climax or denouement—that any attempt to map of the most recognizable voices in contemporary its structure seems oddly inappropriate . For it is American prose . Her energetic and eclectic style, Dillard’s powerful, personal, and at times ecstatic ranging from that of the religious mystic to that (a word whose etymology means “standing beside of the stand-up comedian, reflects her perception oneself”) voice that holds the narrative together . that existence embraces both the sublime and the Pilgrim loosely follows the pattern of the seasons . absurd .”14 This apt characterization of Dillard’s writ- In this it owes a debt to Walden, which purports to ing gets to the heart of what makes it distinctive: describe a year “in the woods ”. (In fact, Thoreau an “energetic and eclectic style ”. Literary style is lived in his cabin at Walden Pond for two years, not easy to define . It is the combination of habits, frequently visiting the Emerson household for talents, and tendencies that makes a writer’s voice Sunday dinner and conversation with local literary distinctive . As readers have acknowledged for notables ). Dillard does not insist very strongly on decades, Annie Dillard has one of the most distinc- Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 26 GUIDE some readers is the degree of artifice that Dillard employs, for not all is as it seems in the narrative . Years after its publication the author would reveal, in an interview, that she had in fact never owned the “old fighting tom,” the cat in the first chapter, and never experienced the bloody symbolic clawing on her chest that she describes so vividly . In fact, Dillard borrowed the entire episode from someone else, a student of hers (whom she rightly asked permission to use the episode) . The persistent and engaging voice of the “I-witness” narrator, therefore, is in fact a construct based on a certain amount of subterfuge or misrepresentation . Such may be the case with all fiction, but Pilgrim has been billed as nonfiction (and won the Pulitzer for “general nonfiction”) . How much fiction is acceptable in nonfiction? How creative should creative nonfiction be? The episode of the tomcat is but one of several examples in which Dillard plays fast and loose with the facts . In the same chapter (Chapter One) she later claims to have witnessed a giant water bug sucking the internal organs, and the life, out of a frog; she records the occasion with fascination and horror . Yet this “event,” it turns out, never happened either—at least, it did not happen to her . Nevertheless, like the opening passage about the tomcat, the water bug vignette is one of the most riveting and significant passages in the entire book, and Dillard’s thoughts on both phenomena are what matter . Still, we must step Photograph of Annie Dillard, by Phyllis Rose. back and consider the relationship between fiction- Courtesy of Russell & Volkening, Literary Agents. al and (putatively) nonfictional narrative . What if “nonfiction” turns out to differ very little from fiction? Where do we draw the line between tive voices in American literature today . Her writing acceptable versus unacceptable misrepresenta- style is personal, allusive, vivid, energetic—occa- tion? One is reminded of the opening of Herman sionally even breathless—and both disciplined and Melville’s great classic Moby-Dick, in which the somewhat wild . narrator famously exhorts the reader, “Call me After only a few pages of reading, and certainly Ishmael ”. In doing so Melville signals to the reader after reading more, one starts to realize that Annie that fictional narratives are constructs that require Dillard’s voice, her narrative persona (the character the participation of readers and that readers should of the book’s narrator), is a carefully crafted feature be aware of their own participatory roles . Dillard, of the text itself . Even as Dillard’s narrative voice in contrast, provides no such signal of an implicit seems to speak in the genuine tones of personal reader–narrator “contract”; instead, she simply sincerity, that voice is as much an artistic creation asks us to follow a story that she presents as hav- as anything else in the book . As many readers have ing come from her own experiences . But this is noted, she is a supreme literary stylist, worthy of not the case . Rather, she engages the reader in a comparison to the likes of Virginia Woolf, William personal, first-person narrative that makes claims Faulkner, Herman Melville, and Ernest Hemingway . about what happened—“I used to have a cat”— The comparison to writers of fiction is particu- when in fact we cannot be certain if it happened larly apt, for storytelling, or the art of narrative, to her . is famously unreliable . It can be challenging to A debate over the ethical status of this literary separate fact from fiction in any story . Even works ruse, or technique (depending on how you view it), of nonfiction have their literary tricks, secrets, and has continued ever since the exposure of Dillard’s subterfuges, and in this Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is borrowing episodes from other sources and then no exception . What may come as a surprise for representing them as events that actually hap- Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 27 pened to her . Some readers and critics take the strategies that make use of the intrinsic play, or position that Dillard’s misrepresentation of her wiggle room, in language itself . Dillard’s narra- own experiences is unacceptable and diminishes tive persona is an unusually playful one, but she her achievements as a writer; others are entirely means for us as readers to take playfulness itself unconcerned by the fact that great creative writers seriously . Indeed, her first chapter, titled “Heaven tell stories . What does it matter if Dillard ever saw a and Earth in Jest,” suggests that the natural world giant water bug sucking the life out of a frog? That seems to have been created by a trickster deity . is what those insects do every day . Similarly, does Another of Dillard’s rhetorical techniques is the she need to have experienced those bloody paw use of sudden, shocking juxtapositions . Near the prints on her skin to imagine it happening and to opening of the narrative, for example, she writes, “I reflect on what such an occurrence might suggest sit on the downed tree and watch the black steers about bodily and spiritual truths? Whatever your slip on the creek bottom . They are all bred beef: feelings about how much weight the “creative” beef heart, beef hide, beef hocks . They’re a human part of creative nonfiction should have, Dillard’s product like rayon ”. 15 This is a very disconcerting creative writing contains descriptive passages that statement . The narrator has just described some are not always factually accurate . bottomland near a stream where she likes to go One way to think about Dillard’s narrative unre- for walks . The reader doesn’t expect to see bovine liability is through the lens of postmodernism, animals described as rayon . After all, this is nature a concept (defined in the “Keywords” section) writing! Labeling the large steers with which she that helps makes sense of narratives in which the shares the landscape “a human product like rayon” coherence of the narrative persona, or of the nar- starkly reminds the reader of just how profoundly rative itself, is rendered problematic or uncertain . agro-industry has modified the genetic make-up Postmodernist narratives, such as the novels of of farm animals . The simile of “steers like rayon” Vladimir Nabokov and Thomas Pynchon or the sto- catches us off guard and reminds us of our pre- ries of Jorge Luis Borges, frequently blur the line dicament in the modern world: even nature has between fact and fiction and undermine the read- been utterly transformed by human technology, er’s ability to trust the narrative voice as well as the so much so that one cannot even observe cattle realism of the setting . Such narratives often shift munching their cuds without being reminded of between literary styles, modes, and even genres, how much the human relationship to farm animals creating the effect of a pastiche . To some extent has changed over time . this is true of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which moves Yet Dillard is not merely a rhetorical trickster with between various discursive modes—the discourse a penchant for shocking her readers with unlikely of natural history, theological speculation, science similes . Everywhere in her writing Dillard strives to writing, and memoir—in the voice of a somewhat make the reader feel the spiritual energy of words unreliable narrator . and the transformative power of observing natural Style and Technique phenomena with a mind open to wonder and new discoveries . Consider the following passage from Dillard writes the way professional magicians per- early in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: form: both kinds of performance rely on illusion, If you stand where the ocean breaks on a sudden shifts, and carefully orchestrated theatri- shallow beach, you see the raised water in cality . Think about the book’s title, for example . a wave is translucent, shot with lights . One A pilgrim is a religious traveler who undertakes a late afternoon at low tide a hundred big journey to a holy site . Christians often make pil- sharks passed the beach near the mouth grimages to such holy sites as Jerusalem, Rome, of a tidal river in a feeding frenzy . As each Santiago de Compostella, and Canterbury; similar- green wave rose from the churning water, ly, Muslims must make the Haj to Mecca at least it illuminated within itself the six- or eight- once . The paradox of the title lies in the word “at,” foot-long bodies of twisting sharks . The for Dillard’s narrative recounts a relatively sta- sharks disappeared as each wave rolled tionary pilgrimage—a voyage to a more spiritually toward me; then a new wave would swell aware experience of the here-and-now . The whole above the horizon, containing in it, like point of a pilgrimage is to travel to a holy place, scorpions in amber, sharks that roiled and yet the pilgrimage described takes place at Tinker heaved . The sight held awesome wonders: Creek . And what is so holy about the erstwhile-un- power and beauty, grace tangled in a rap- known Tinker Creek? The narrative itself forms a ture with violence 16. spiritual pilgrimage as it moves from doubt and wonder to ecstatic affirmation . Clearly, the book’s This descriptive vignette typifies Annie Dillard’s title flirts with irony and paradox, two rhetorical writing in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; it might even be Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 28 GUIDE said to contain the author’s central themes: that hands as he was fastened to the cross at Golgotha . nature is mysterious and awe-inspiring, and that in Thus, the paw prints on Dillard’s chest evoke the nature’s mysterious and often horrifying dynam- stigmata . But that is not the limit of the symbolism ics lies spiritual meaning . The world is laden with here, for red roses have traditionally stood for love “grace tangled in a rapture with violence”—an idea and desire in European literature since (at least) to which Dillard returns again and again . the Middle Ages . Is Dillard suggesting that there is Shortly after this arresting passage Dillard pauses something Christ-like about the “old fighting tom”? to reflect on the spiritual significance of the sharks Does she wish to suggest that love, desire, death, in the waves, and in doing so she tips her hand, as and spirituality are inextricably linked? She does it were, as to her theological predilections . “We not give answers to these questions . Instead she don’t know what’s going on here,” she writes . “If asks a question that reverberates like the epigraph: these tremendous events are random combina- “What blood was this, and what roses?” The impli- tions of matter run amok, the yield of millions of cation is that we are marked by mortality, claimed monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is by death, a condition that creates the possibility for it in us, hammered out of those same typewrit- spiritual insight . As she ponders her (fictionalized) ers, that they ignite? We don’t know” (pp . 10–11) . experience of the tomcat, Dillard cannot decide if Here again the imagery suggests unusual energy the blood represents something good or bad, a and violence: “matter run amok,” “hammered sign of the beauty of the natural world in spite of out,” and metaphorical typewriters that “ignite”? death (the rose) or a sign of nature’s unmitigated Clearly, Dillard’s imagination runs toward violence, violence (the blood) . At the end of the opening intensity, and mystery . Life, she seems to suggest, scene, the narrator comes to the conclusion that is a flame, a brief flash of ignited matter that we we cannot know the truth of what nature means, cannot fathom but of which we must partake . but that we can open our spiritual eyes, as it were, to the implications of our own knowledge of This is precisely where Pilgrim at Tinker Creek mortality . has much to tell us about energy, innovation, and ingenuity . The awe-inspiring energy of the The opening passage evokes a similarly well- natural world, and its powerful connection to the known passage in Walden, where Thoreau claims, spiritual energies latent in all human beings, she “God himself culminates in the present moment, suggests, have never been adequately described and will never be more divine in the laps of all the or fully appreciated . Her task is to use her powers ages . And we are enabled to apprehend what is as a writer to reflect on the profound link between sublime and noble only by a perpetual instilling 19 these forces . and drenching of the reality which surrounds us ”. For Dillard reality is instilled and drenched by Chapter One: blood, a metonymy for our own mortal condition . “Heaven and Earth in Jest” After the episode of the tomcat Dillard offers us a brief and clear picture of where she lives, situating It is startling that a book that contains some of the narrative in a place—by a creek in a valley in the most beautiful descriptive passages of nature Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains . Again we should writing begins with a scene filled with violence and note the contrast between the creek, which she gore . Dillard begins chapter one, “Heaven and Earth thinks of as active, busy, and intricate, and the in Jest,” with a memory (allegedly) of her cat, not a mountains, which are massive, mysterious, and cuddly kitten but an “old fighting tom,” who comes simple in their passivity . This contrast contains a 17 to her in the night “stinking of urine and blood ”. strange twist: the creek represents the world to The cat does indeed come to Dillard for comfort, Dillard; she writes, “I live there ”. 20 Yet at the same but she represents the animal’s actions as anything time she writes that the “mountains are home ”. but comfortable: the cat kneads her “powerfully… How can she live by the creek while simultaneous- as if sharpening his claws, or pummeling a mother ly claiming the mountains are her home? One can 18 for milk ”. The distinct contrast between the image resolve this problem imagistically; indeed, con- of mother’s milk, a soothing substance, and the sidered visually, the problem turns out not to be a active power of the verb “pummeling” is picked up problem at all . If we remember Dillard’s description again in the final image the bloody paw prints left of the way Tinker Creek winds around Dillard’s on her body, “painted with roses ”. house, making an ox-bow loop so that “the creek The symbolism of these bloody paw prints is is both in back of the house, south of me, and also multiply symbolic . Blood evokes death (what did on the other side of the road, north of me,” then we the cat kill?) as well as life itself (blood keeps us realize that the regional topography here is inter- alive) . Blood also evokes the stigmata of Christ, the woven .21 The creek is a both/and entity—in front bloody holes from the nails driven through Jesus’ of her and behind her . Just as the bloody rose paw Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 29 Photograph of Tinker Creek. Photo credit: Margie Hunter. prints are emblems both of beauty and of violence, ing, in fear and trembling, some of the unmapped so too can part of the narrator live by the creek dim reaches and unholy fastnesses to which those while part of her lives in the mountains . Struggling tales and sights so dizzyingly lead ”. 22 with the complexities of these contrasts through In the first chapter we also learn that it is January, the rest of the narrative offers a productive (if com- a fitting month with which to begin . Dillard is care- plicated) way into Dillard’s writing and thinking . ful to tell us not only where she is, but also when Often the contrasts are less violent, but the nar- events take place; the changing of the seasons fas- rative continually progresses through differences cinates her . In this chapter, January is the “now,” and divergences, as when later in the chapter but this chapter—like all the others—switches back Dillard watches the light on the mountains come and forth between times (and sometimes places and go intermittently as clouds come between as well) . The chapter opens with the scene of the earth and sky . The light comes on and off not grad- tomcat, but that is a memory . The entire book alter- ually but like a switch (“ping,” she writes, simply), nates—often confusingly—between a time which lighting up different parts of the mountains and a we might call now (in this case one partly cloudy clump of sycamore trees nearby . This alternation day in January) and past times which impinge makes her dizzy; she likens it to a magic show in a upon the present . It’s a bit like a patchwork quilt: carnival . Significantly, she uses this description of the various memories and philosophical musings the light show on the mountain to lead into what are the squares of fabric which Dillard sews into might be called her official “thesis” for the narra- one blanket out of a series of stitches which we tive, her declaration of intention in writing Pilgrim might think of as the footprints of Dillard as she at Tinker Creek . She writes, “I propose to keep here takes a series of walks in each chapter . what Thoreau called a ‘meteorological journal of The “plot” of this narrative (if it can be said to the mind,’ telling some tales and describing some have a plot—perhaps “structure” is a better term of the sights of this rather tamed valley, and explor- in this context) can be described as a series of Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 30 GUIDE walks punctuated by lengthy descriptions of memories and images which in turn initiate lengthy philosophical inquiries . Much of the book will be filled with descriptions of her walks . This is commonplace in European literature, particularly in the philosophical writings of such thinkers as Jean- Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, as well as the English Romantic poets . On this particular January walk, she watches some beef cattle drink from the creek; the introduction of the cattle should bring us to a sharp realization that this natural world is heavily occupied already by human production . The cattle are not even animals to Dillard’s mind: “they’re a human product…they’re like a field of shoes,” she writes .23 It is important to note that while Dillard is unmistakably unhappy about the use to which the cattle will be put, she does not go on a lengthy tirade but keeps the tone light, even humorous—though her disdain for meat production comes across all the more clearly because of the biting quality of her humor: “they have beef fat behind their eyes, beef stew,” she says of the cattle . She rebels against what the cattle stand for both by her humor (as when she yells “Swedish meat- balls!” at the animals to get them to move out of her path) and also by appropriating their environment for her own use . Whoever raises the cattle has erected a hanging fence on cables across the stream to keep the cattle from escaping their field by wandering down the creek bed when they come to it to drink . A fence across a stream is a strange image: impermeable as far as the cattle are con- Portrait of Immanuel Kant. Dillard’s use of cerned, but utterly useless to hold back the stream a series of walks punctuated by lengthy itself, which flows under and through it without descriptions of memories and images a problem . Dillard clearly aligns herself with the which in turn initiate lengthy philosophical stream and not the cattle: “Squirrels, the neigh- inquiries is a common feature in European borhood children, and I use the downstream fence literature, particularly in the philosophical writings of such thinkers as Kant. as a swaying bridge across the creek ”. 24 Dillard turns a human-made structure designed to contain anthropogenically modified animals deliberately (allegedly) does not jump out of her way in a panic designed for food into the liberatory image of a as the others do; as she watches it, the frog slowly bridge . deflates until all that is left is a “frog skin bag ”. 25 After crossing the bridge and arriving at a small Dillard tells us that this is because its insides have island in the middle of Tinker Creek, Dillard sits been dissolved and sucked out by a giant water down at a spot she says she is “drawn to ”. In a bug, and then uses this experience of the frog as a pattern which will become familiar as the narrative jumping off point (as the frogs themselves use the progresses, this spot triggers a memory which bank) into a philosophical discussion of the horrors Dillard first narrates and then interprets . This is the of nature—what the poet Tennyson called “nature famous scene of the frog and the giant water bug, red in tooth and claw ”. which displays the contrast between the idyllic charm of a natural setting and the gothic horror of Dillard’s central question is whether or not nature, some natural phenomena . The scene begins with or God, or whatever force created the universe did playful humor—Dillard amuses herself by walking so “in jest” (the phrase comes from the Koran), along the bank, scaring frogs into jumping off or maliciously, or unconcernedly . It’s an age-old the bank into the water . One frog she approaches question: why are there evil and horror in the Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 31 uncertainty—has become a key criterion of evalu- ating a creative writer’s talent; it is also a key facet of Dillard’s approach to the natural world and her approach to the philosophical quandaries on which she muses . Her willingness to entertain ideas, rather than hammering them home, and to reflect upon them rather than arguing for a particular position or resolution, can be very refreshing . Certainly the powerful energy and distinctive voice of the first chapter of Pilgrim mark it as one of the great openings in American literature . Chapter Two: “Seeing” As she does with the first chapter, Dillard opens Chapter Two with a memory, this time a childhood memory of hiding a lucky penny along a stretch of sidewalk . The symbolic significance of this memory, however, is much less immediately resonant, or clear, than the meaning of the tomcat’s bloody footprints in the first chapter . When Dillard tran- sitions from the penny memory to a discussion of seeing, are we meant to think that the penny memory is a parable about the importance of seeing? Did she hide the penny out of sight for others Portrait of John Keats by William Hilton. to find, thereby encouraging people to see things Keats described “negative capability” as the they might not ordinarily see . If we read the mem- ability to hold several ideas about a topic ory in this way, we can understand that for Dillard simultaneously, without trying to find the “seeing” is really a kind of “seeking,” a finding out right answer or resolution, and it is a key facet of Dillard’s approach to the natural of hidden things (both scientific and spiritual) . world and her approach to the philosophical The penny memory seems more important in its quandaries on which she muses. emphasis on the size of the penny—a small thing, © National Portrait Gallery, London. unimportant—than for any other reason . At the start of the chapter Dillard focuses not on the idea of seeing in any grand scale (which we might world? Some philosophers ask it apropos of war expect from her loving descriptions of mountains in or other human-inflicted horrors; Dillard asks the the first chapter), but on the importance of seeing same question based on her observations of the the little things, like bugs in the grass . One theme natural world . On the one hand there is horror and ties the images in the second chapter to the images cruelty (the deflated frog), but on the other hand in the first: the idea of suddenness, fleetingness . there is beauty (as in the elegant flight of the mock- Just as the light flickered on and off the mountain ingbird which Dillard describes just after the frog cliff in chapter one, so too do the deer and the episode) . Which is the “truth” of nature? Dillard’s red-winged blackbirds appear and disappear in final answer appears to be “We don’t know ”. 26 chapter two . “Nature is very much a now-you-see- 27 Dillard’s willingness to eschew certainty resem- it, now-you-don’t affair,” she writes . Or, as she bles the mentality of another Romantic writer says several sentences later, “now-you-don’t-see- with whom Dillard has much in common, John it, now-you-do ”. That reversal of the general form Keats . Keats is famous for his magnificent odes . of the well-known magician’s adage is in keeping (The “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and the “Ode to a with Dillard’s theme of the unpredictability of the Nightingale” are two of the best known ). In a let- natural world, its distance from human expecta- ter to his brother that has become justly famous tions . Whereas a human magician first lets us see (indeed, it is one of the greatest statements about something (now-you-see-it) and then—presto— the poet’s psychology), Keats describes something hides it from us, nature’s magic is first concealing he calls “negative capability”: the ability to hold (now-you-don’t-see-it) and then revealing, but only several ideas about a topic simultaneously, with- if you train yourself to look for it . out trying to find the right answer or resolution . Dillard spends much of the first part of the chapter This ability to remain uncertain—even to celebrate listing animals which are hard to see in nature— Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 32 GUIDE deer, birds, various insects, camouflaged creatures, erally see planaria and amoebae in the water . She etc . She explains that these animals are difficult strives, here, to imagine life as the biotic Other . to see not because they are necessarily hidden What would it be like to be an amoeba? particularly well (although some are), but rather Dillard’s lengthy discussion of the von Senden because we don’t know how to look for them . The book Space and Sight, which describes the experi- snake-lover can find snakes; the average person ences of blind people who were able to see for the cannot . first time because of advances in optical surgery, Later in the chapter Dillard offers another example forms a large part of Pilgrim’s second chapter . of this tendency when she tries to watch the fish in What should we make of this digression? After all, the creek at sunset . She can’t seem to get a clear we are expecting a book about the natural world, view of any one fish; “it was always just happening not a social or medical history of humanity . Yet somewhere else,” she writes 28. She literally has to human nature, like the biophysical environment, change the way she sees physically, to decide not is also a great mystery for Dillard, who uses this to watch the fish and instead (it seems) to simply seeming detour to introduce the idea that sight (like stare at the brim of her own hat until she simply so many other experiences she will describe) is not gets intoxicated with blurry flashes of light which a collectively shared phenomenon or experience . (again, it seems) are merely reflections of petals To say that sight is relative is perhaps too simplis- floating in the creek . The point seems to be that if tic, although Dillard insists that different people you try to look, nature will elude you, but if you let (and creatures) “see” things differently depending yourself forget your agenda (I must see this fish) upon who, what, and where they are . The moral and “hush the noise of useless interior babble,” she draws from the parable of the newly-sighted is you’ll have a chance to see something—it might more complicated . At the start of the chapter she not be what you came to see, but it’ll be won- argued, essentially, that sight is something one derful . Just before this scene she says, “there is must learn; clearly this discussion of the struggles 29 another kind of seeing that involves a letting go ”. of the formerly blind follows a similar path . But Thus, the chapter called “Seeing” is also, perhaps many of the individuals whose stories she tells do ironically, a chapter about not seeing—about blind- not actually enjoy becoming sighted—they find it ness and darkness . Again we see Dillard playing difficult, confusing, and even traumatic . They must with contrasts, reversals, alternations, irony, and learn to make sense of what they see—to come to paradox . terms with it emotionally and spiritually . In a sense The next distinct episode in chapter two describes this experience allegorizes Dillard’s own spiritual a nighttime walk during which Dillard became experience, for she, too, finds true insight into the frightened of both the darkness itself and some- workings of the natural world—the Creation—ago- thing that emerges from the water near her . nizingly meaningful . Because Dillard is also describing in this scene a series of reflections on the surface of the water, Chapter Three: “Winter” we are never quite sure whether this thing Dillard In the third chapter we move to February, and fears is in fact a creature in the water, or merely the chapter begins not with a personal memory an airplane slicing through clouds high above her but with a description of a historical event—an but reflected on the creek’s surface in front of her . overpopulation of European starlings invading a Once again, it is important to remember what Virginia town . The event (and the chapter more Dillard wrote in chapter one: “We don’t know ”. In generally) allows Dillard unusual scope for humor, this chapter, Dillard fine-tunes this repeated theme for she plainly sees the human approach to con- into something more specific: “I don’t understand trolling the starling population as rather ludicrous . 30 what I see ”. Seeing, as she says near the end of It is also, ultimately, unsuccessful . As with her the chapter, may be the “pearl of great price,” but discussion of the bred-for-beef cattle in the first 31 it is something that “may not be sought ”. chapter, this humor does not hide her disdain for Whatever it is that terrifies her sends her home in the consequences of human intervention in the a panic; she lies on her bed and begins to consider natural world . But she also does not sympathize the enormity of the earth, the solar system, stars, with the starlings (likewise, she evinced no senti- meteors, and beyond . One might think that Dillard mental attachment to the beef cattle), although she would continue in this expansive vein, thinking does later in the chapter find their arrival at sunset about phenomena on a large scale, but she returns to be a thing of beauty . She does not have a simple quickly to a discussion of the small—the micro- animal-rights activist agenda but seems here to scopic, in fact . She describes putting creek water bemoan the presence of the starlings (they are an in a bowl and simply staring at it until she can lit- invasive species) as well as the ways the people Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 33 A European starling. Chapter Three opens with a description of an overpopulation of European starlings invading a Virginia town. of Radford, Virginia, tried to deal with a problem of Virginia to get rid of them . Neither the coot nor other humans started in the first place . the starlings much care what the humans do—the birds have their own agendas . After telling the starling history, Dillard moves into a lyrical description of the winter landscape, Dillard’s point in this chapter seems to be that various rather gory winter tales of survival, and any effort by humans to control animals will be her own obsession with reading explorers’ travel unsuccessful . In both the starling saga and the narratives during the long winter months . What coot experience, the humans are trying to “trick” does that have to do with a plague of starlings? the birds; Dillard makes it clear that the birds are Her message seems oblique at best until she unimpressed . In her efforts to spy on the coot, comes to the episode of the coot . Having played a Dillard is hiding behind trees and pretending to be wonderfully ridiculous game of hide-and-seek with a tree whenever the coot glances her way—but it this coot, believing it to be a skittish species and turns out, of course, that the coot could not care yet wanting a “good look” (any reference to sight less . In their efforts to eradicate the starling pop- should now make us think back to the discussions ulation, the people of Radford tried freezing them, of vision in chapter two), she finally realizes that frightening them with loud noises, and playing the coot is not afraid of her, that she has (as she recordings of distressed starlings at the birds in feared) been making a fool of herself in the snow . the hopes of driving them away . The starlings were She thinks, “I’ll kill it . I’ll hit the thing with a snow- similarly unperturbed: “YIKE OUCH HELP went the 33 ball, I really will; I’ll make a mud-hen hash ”. 32 Her recordings; snore went the birds ”. exasperated reaction to the bird’s utter unconcern The details of winter survival techniques which fol- for her behavior is analogous to the way the star- low the tale of the coot tell a similar story of animal lings reacted to the feeble attempts of the people resourcefulness in the face of hardship . If all these Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 34 GUIDE A Polyphemus Moth. Dillard’s story about the Polypemus Moth in the Mason jar is one of the scenes of humans’ unconscious cruelty to animals that is presented in Chapter Four. animals (and Dillard offers an impressive list) can descriptions of insects’ relations to one another manage to survive a cold winter without the help of and her memories of human treatment of insects central heating, how can humans possibly hope to are repositories of powerful emotions—indeed, control them? In her own house, she tells us later of trauma . We have seen her surprise us with her in the chapter, she doesn’t even try—she lets the less-than-comforting visions of nature in earlier spiders have free rein and has long since given up chapters; here she pulls out all the stops and offers trying to kill insects or bring home spider egg sacs . a series of increasingly horrifying visions of the The moral of this chapter seems to be that “Things natural world . are well in their place,” and human intervention in Thoreau famously wrote about a battle between 34 the natural world is ludicrous and ineffectual . two species of ants in Walden, and his compari- Chapter Four: “The Fixed” son between ant and human behavior has been justly celebrated . But whereas Thoreau sees ants The opening of chapter four brings us back to as little automata resembling human soldiers, the importance of learning to see . “I have just Dillard sees something completely different in the learned to see praying mantis egg cases,” Dillard world of insects . Dillard recalls a mantis hatch that writes . They were there all along, she surmises, she watched in elementary school; after the eggs but she needed to learn to see them—and now, hatched in the Mason jar, the young mantises pro- of course, she sees them everywhere . The chap- ceeded to devour one another until only two were ter also introduces several new thematic threads, left (both subsequently died of wounds in their mostly articulated through Dillard’s experiences last battle) . The next major episode in the chap- with insects . Insects are associated with all man- ter is the description of Dillard watching a female ner of gothic and gruesome behavior—Dillard’s mantis lay her eggs in a great pulsing explosion Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 35 of foam . After witnessing the spectacle, Dillard monstrous figure . If Chapter Three offered scenes is determined to watch the hatching . She checks of human’s conscious cruelty to animals (the on the egg sac daily; one day the sac is gone, as townspeople’s attempts to kill starlings or Dillard’s is the clump of wild roses to which the sac was flippant desire for mud-hen hash), Chapter Four attached: her neighbor had ridden his tractor over gives us scenes of humans’ unconscious cruelty . the site . Both stories suggest that the excitement Why didn’t the first teacher simply let the canni- humans feel watching the birth of insects inevita- bal mantises out? Why didn’t the other teacher bly comes to a bad end; human thoughtlessness in remove the moth from the jar and let it hatch with the face of creatures’ needs inevitably turns birth room to grow? Instead, these insects become mon- into death . The human desire to watch animals do strous because of their control by negligent human their thing—whatever their thing is—leads to the thoughtless destruction of those animals . beings . These two experiences with mantises set the stage The second half of the chapter offers stories of the for Dillard’s powerful telling of her memory of the apparently gratuitous violence of insects them- Polyphemus Moth . The memory is clearly trau- selves . A mantis feeds on a wasp who is feeding matic, and it resonates deeply . Dillard introduces on a bee . The moth caterpillars from Fabre’s exper- it with an apology, almost a trepidation . The tale iments follow a circular trail blindly day in and day unfolds with a kind of suspense unusual in Pilgrim out until they die of starvation, even though their at Tinker Creek, and with many analogies to the preferred food is just outside the circle and would story of the mantises . As a child, Dillard and her take only a short detour off the beaten track . Later classmates watched anxiously over a cocoon, wait- in the chapter Dillard ties that circular trail back to ing impatiently for it to release an adult moth as the Mason jar which indirectly caused the deaths of impressive as the one they’d seen drawn in a book all those mantises and the Polyphemus Moth . The at school . They passed the cocoon from hand to Mason jar and the circle are “fixed” spaces which hand, and they could feel the moth moving with- imprison insects and humans alike and lead us to in . The moth emerges inside the Mason jar into destruction . Even her beloved Tinker Creek, before which the teacher has placed the cocoon, and the an emblem of vibrant change and flux, in this lacquer-like sticky substance on the wings adheres, chapter momentarily becomes a despised object, joining the wings and destroying the moth’s ability to fly . Because the moth cannot spread his wings seeming to flow because it is “pushed” inexorably inside the cramped space, they harden in what by mindless natural forces . Dillard describes as a “torture of random pleats and folds ”. 35 The next time she sees the moth, it is Chapter Five: “Untying the Knot” trying to walk away from the school with his wings It is Chapter Five, and we are still only in February, stuck together on his back, picking his way along but the mood is much less somber than in Chapter the sidewalk like a zombie—or like the implacable Four . Dillard is eager to catch the precise moment robot at the end of The Terminator . This is perhaps when winter turns into spring, although she real- the most gothic scene in the entire book, for it izes she cannot mark that change any more than evokes a powerful unseen agency driving a gro- she can find the beginning or end of the knot she tesque kind of action . finds in the discarded snake skin—like the knot, the In part, this is an effect of the gender pronoun progression of the seasons is a “continuous loop” Dillard gives the moth—she notes immediately with no discernible breaks 36. Although she realizes upon the moth’s hatching that it is male, and pro- she cannot be present at the very moment when ceeds to call it “he” as she describes its tortured spring arrives (because there is in fact no such one attempts to escape . Other creatures in Pilgrim at moment), she is fascinated in this chapter by the Tinker Creek are generally simply referred to as idea of seasons—what they mean, how humans “it ”. Giving the moth a specific gender immediate- divide them up and experience them, and how the ly personifies it (although creatures do, of course, notion of a continuously looping progression of have gender) . The moth is further personified pre- seasons might just be the best analogy she can cisely because it is walking away down a driveway like a zombie or horror movie villain after com- imagine for the presence of a divine force which mitting some unspeakable act of violence, rather is not everywhere at once but rather rolls like a than (as it should rightly do) flying freely in the wheel or a coiled snake’s skin across the face of the air . Hatching in the confines of a manmade Mason earth . It is not the first time Dillard has introduced jar has turned the moth into a grotesque dwarfed her personal view of divinity . Like the month of human, mangled and forever mutated by human February itself in the calendar, the fifth chapter is thoughtlessness from its rightful species to a the shortest of all . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 36 GUIDE Chapter Six: “The Present” While Chapter Five stressed the continuity of time, the endless loop of the seasons and the divine force, Chapter Six focuses instead upon the now, the present moment . This is in many ways the core of the narrative . Is it any wonder that Dillard would later write a book with the title For the Time Being? What does it mean to be for a finite amount of time? This question lies behind Chapter Six, a chapter in which Dillard’s patterns and repetitions become increasingly clear . By now many tropes and ideas have become familiar, and the narrative achieves a relatively regular pattern . Once again there are animals—in this case a puppy—that incite certain human emotions . Here too we see again Dillard’s preoccupation with light as a metaphor for inspiration, revelation, a momentary insight into eternity or the infinite . Light has appeared in many places thus far, in discussions of blindness, sight, shadows, light on the mountains, and most importantly the tree with the lights in it, which appeared at the end of Chapter Two . Chapter Six takes up this tree with the lights in it yet again . It is also a chapter about consciousness and (as the title says) the ways in which humans perceive the now . A seemingly simple incident with a puppy Dillard Trees—in Chapter Six particularly the meets at a rural gas station causes Dillard to sycamore—represent for Dillard moments of utter unselfconsciousness. explore the nature of the present; in particular she is interested in what happens when the present moment becomes a moment of radical insight into in the world . Self-consciousness—the awareness the purity of the infinite . She connects this experience of “petting the puppy” explicitly with an of the self as a self—is what severs the self from experience at the end of Chapter Two in which she the experience of the present, or of eternity . describes seeing “the tree with lights in it,” just Dillard chooses the word “innocence” to describe as a newly sighted girl reported seeing when the living without this damaging self-consciousness . doctor took her bandages off . The lighted tree is Children (like the girl who helps Dillard find the as much a spiritual vision as a real tree whose nee- caddis fly case) and animals, like the puppy (who dles are momentarily shining in the sunshine; the does not return to self-consciousness when Dillard lighted tree is lit by grace, and Dillard writes that does), are able to remain for longer periods in this seeing it opens a door directly into eternity . Petting acutely aware state of the present . the puppy is a similar experience: the moment Trees—in this chapter particularly the syca- when the narrator is petting the puppy and look- more—also represent for Dillard moments of utter ing at the light on a distant mountain becomes a unself-consciousness . They freeze-frame us into fleeting experience we might call “out of body,” the absolute present . But trees also allow Dillard but Dillard considers it more an “out of conscious- to move from a discussion of the present moment ness” experience, or more specifically an “out of (innocent, simple) to a celebration of the multi- self-consciousness” experience . She becomes, in plicity of the now (symbolized by her discussion the moment, fully present and feels “more alive of all the things alive in just the top inch of soil than all the world…This is it, I think, this is it, right beneath her as she sits under the sycamore) . 37 now, the present… ”. Trees branch out above and below ground; this Her concern in this chapter is with the problem of branching suggests to Dillard the branching of human self-consciousness, the ways in which the thought and the importance of the ability to “make burden of our knowledge of the self keeps us from connections ”. 38 The thought of branching triggers fully experiencing the present and separates us an enormous flood of memories; Dillard begins from one another and from the immanent divinity a kind of list of images and events from previous Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 37 chapters—the giant water bug, the moth, etc . This time being caught in the web of the past is acceptable to Dillard, even something to celebrate—the tree allows her to connect with the past in a way that does not impinge upon her experience of the present . Near the end of the chapter Dillard makes the next logical step into the future . For this she needs the creek; as she stands watching, the water in the creek comes toward her, symbolizing the ineluc- table flow of time and the approach of the future . Finally, at the very end of the chapter, she returns to the memory of the puppy at the service station, and we come full circle—from the present to the past to the future and back again to the present, which is where she has striven to be all along . Chapter Seven: “Spring” Dillard begins the seventh chapter with a discussion of language, a theme which she already Portrait of the British novelist and lecturer touched on briefly in the second chapter when John Cowper Powys (1872–1963), whom she argued that seeing was a matter of “verbal- Dillard references in Chapter Seven: “Spring.” ization”—that we can only make sense of what we see if we can articulate what we are seeing and communicate that vision to our own brain or to beauties she discovers on her outings—butterflies, another person 39. In Chapter Seven she tackles the locust blooms, and especially newts . relativity of language, beginning first with human At this point in a reader’s experience of Pilgrim at language and then moving on to birdsong as Tinker Creek, one might feel justified in expecting another kind of language, equally varied and mys- her description of newts to mean something, to terious to humans as Chinese might be to a native carry some kind of symbolic weight, at least even- speaker of English (or vice-versa) . tually . But after three or four paragraphs, one is still Musing on the possibility that birdsong might waiting for the punch line, so to speak (a satisfac- have “meaning” leads Dillard to a different (and, tion her writing so often provides) . The deflating to her mind, better) question, which is a question frog meant something; the moth meant some- of aesthetics . Aesthetics is a branch of philoso- thing; the puppy meant something . What then do phy that centers on the inquiry into the nature of these newts mean? She moves on to a description beauty, and Dillard argues that beauty is a kind of of flowers and newly leafing trees without telling language, but a language which has no key and us . Maybe, then, it will turn out that the trees mean instead must be experienced rather than decoded . something, given the previous discussions of the It does not make sense, she argues, to ask what tree with the lights in it (Chapter Two) and the syca- birdsong means, since there is no way we can mores (Chapter Six) . A brief reference to the writer know that (and, she says, the birds themselves John Cowper Powys gives us a hint as to what probably do not even know why they sing) . Even if Dillard is up to here . She writes, “John Cowper we did know such a thing, it would not necessarily Powys said, ‘We have no reason for denying to do us any good . What matters is to know why we the world of plants a certain slow, dim, vague, find birdsong beautiful, not to speculate about ani- large, leisurely semi-consciousness ’. He may not mals’ languages and their putative meaning . be right, but I like his adjectives ”. 40 In this chapter Dillard is concerned less with understanding It seems fitting that Dillard’s discussion of beauty than with simply enjoying—enjoying the beauties modulates into a kind of Keatsian Ode to Spring, of nature in the springtime and the beauties of a detailing all its beauties . Gone, temporarily, are the skilled writer’s descriptive prose . horrors of winter and of insects . It is April, and her walk in this chapter (recall the familiar pattern of The second half of the chapter moves in a differ- memories/walk/philosophical inquiry/natural his- ent direction but with some key similarities . The tory which, in different combinations, make up the incident of Jean White’s dead horse is told with structure of each chapter) takes her into the woods . light humor; Dillard relates the episode without She offers poetic descriptions of the emergent new the addition of philosophical musing or hints as to Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 38 GUIDE what moral her readers should take from the story . Only at the end of the chapter, when Dillard looks at microscopic rotifer from the pond under her microscope, is she willing to part with any particular moral for this chapter . Looking at such creatures under the scope is, for Dillard, “a moral exercise…a constant reminder of the facts of creation ”. 41 She doesn’t find them beautiful (on the contrary) but seeing them is important and part of the cycle of nature (as is finding the proper resting place for a dead horse) . The flowers, the newts, the rotifer, and all the rest are equally important, and all part of trying “to look spring in the eye ”. 42 In Chapter Eight, Dillard points to the Chapter Eight: “Intricacy” fact that the makeup of a molecule of chlorophyll is precisely identical to the Dillard returns to the microscopic again in Chapter makeup of a molecule of hemoglobin Eight . It is now June, and the chapter begins with except that hemoglobin has an atom of a description of the way late afternoon light falls iron at its center rather than magnesium. on her goldfish . The sight elicits a consideration This profound correspondence between plant and animal life, based in scientific of the small, the minute, and the microscopic . She fact, typifies Dillard’s intellectual bridging describes having seen individual red blood cells of nature writing and science writing. course through the veins in a goldfish’s tail and seeing chloroplasts travel similarly around and around the inside of a plant cell . The similarity ness of creation itself, the surprising similarities does not end there, however . She explains that a that exist between the most unlikely objects . These single molecule of chlorophyll (carried within the similarities are revealed only when one looks at the chloroplasts) is made from atoms of hydrogen, “intricacies” of the world, the details . The details carbon, oxygen and nitrogen arranged around a of the world are unimaginably numerous and central atom of magnesium and that a single mol- impossible to understand; she writes, “creation ecule of hemoglobin (which is carried in red blood carries on with an intricacy unfathomable and cells just as chlorophyll is carried in chloroplasts) apparently uncalled for ”. 43 She gives unusual and is precisely identical to chlorophyll save that hemo- seemingly random examples of this: there are 228 globin has an atom of iron at its center rather muscles in the head of a goat moth caterpillar, for than magnesium . This profound correspondence example, and six million leaves on an large elm 44. between plant and animal life, based in scientific Such examples might seem trivial to some, but fact, astonishes the reader and typifies Dillard’s for Dillard this knowledge is essential to properly intellectual bridging of nature writing and science appreciating the majesty of the natural world (as writing, a historically newer genre of essay . This well as the human body, as her example of the chapter contains elements of both . kidney shows) . If in Chapter Seven the reason for When Dillard traces the similarities between blood closely observing the world was to appreciate and chlorophyll, we are on familiar ground . Her its beauty, in this chapter the reason for learning carefully described scientific inquiry into the deep about the world is similar . Paying attention to the similarity between a goldfish and a plant (and, details ensures that Dillard remains alert to the because humans also have red blood cells, implic- “beauty inexhaustible in its complexity ”. 45 Paying itly between humans and plants) goes further than attention to the details also suggests to Dillard that most nature writers had yet been willing to go; by the creator has what she calls “a generous spir- zooming in at the molecular level, Dillard brings it;” she writes that “he is apt to create anything”; the kinship between the kingdoms of plants and later she writes, “the creator loves pizzazz ”. 46 The animals even closer, to a microscopic baseline . If boundless variety of nature seems to be one of the only difference between the hemoglobin that Dillard’s strongest pieces of evidence for the exis- makes up your blood and the chlorophyll coursing tence of some kind of divine creator . Surely an around a tree leaf is one atom, then the correspon- individual human couldn’t have come up with such dence between plant and animal is both literal and a wild collection of extravagancies . profound . In this chapter Dillard describes a dream she had In this chapter Dillard attempts once again to “see”; (or claims to have had) in which time appeared in this case what she sees is the interconnected- like a never-ending tweed scarf, with each person Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 39 and every time represented in detail as dots and makes a good metaphor for the way Dillard’s swirls of color . She dreams that she can go into narrative progresses: she sees things out in the depth in one spot (“our time” which turns out, world, and these images implant upon her brain rather ludicrously, to be France) and see various in such a way that they emerge elsewhere—as details there—cattle and trees and people and car- thoughts, questions (often without answers), or, as rots . She likens this to watching time unfold on a in this case, dreams . movie screen—not time-lapse photography (which What this dream brings home to Dillard is the ubiq- slows down an event like a rose blooming), but uity of death, even in birth and life . Although death the opposite: a film of geologic and historical time has been part of her narrative from the beginning unfolding . (the mantises, the moth, the dead horse, drowned Chapter Nine: “Flood” animals in the flood, and so on), it is only here that Dillard decides to tackle death head on . She is A heavy air of menace hangs over the opening of aware of the irony: in a chapter taking place in high Chapter Nine . Summer has arrived (in the space summer and titled “fecundity,” a word that refers of two hours), and a summer thunderstorm has to the bringing forth of life, it would perhaps be ushered in a new mood . Dillard’s images are darker more appropriate to consider the topic of birth . But at the outset (the dog is “thin as death”; the mud that, Dillard tells us, is the point, for life and death is “dead tan”; the blue jays are “acting generally are ineluctably linked together—utterly insepara- odd”), but are dispelled by the scene with the ble conceptually and in the material world . When garbage truck, whose backfires she imagines to you see thousands of eggs, or watch insects mate, be gunshots . Nevertheless, the somber mood con- what you are seeing is not the beginning, but the tinues as she recalls the previous summer, when beginning of the end . So she sets out to think about Hurricane Agnes came through her valley, and the death, beginning with images of life pushing forth . flood occurred . Tinker Creek overran its banks and in so doing became—in Dillard’s mind—an entire- But she cannot simply face death and interrogate ly different creek, no longer “our creek” but “the it—not at first . After announcing “this is what I plan high creek,” a violent dragon which begins to rip to do” (namely, talk about death), she digresses away the bridge that spans it . The flooding creek for several pages to talk about the amazing vitality brings down everything with it, but the variety in of plants and how their fecundity is neither fright- this chapter is different—less beautiful, more cha- ening nor disturbing to her but rather resolutely otic—than the “intricacy” Dillard discussed in the optimistic . Plants are safe (as she writes, “acres of previous chapter 47. tulips” has a much better sound to it than “acres of rats ”). The fact that a single plant of rye grass This chapter is unusual in that the entire chapter could put out six thousand miles of root hairs tells one story, the story of the Agnes flooding, does not give Dillard nightmares; rather, this fact with no diverging digressions or tangential asides . elates her, and she has to force herself to return to Generally Dillard gives us brief powerful vignettes the animal world and consider the fecundity there of only a few paragraphs, loosely connected by from a different, more gruesome, angle . bits of natural history, spiritual reflection, and philosophical speculation; this comes as close to an When considering the awfulness of fecundity, extended story as she has yet come . Why now? It Dillard first considers barnacles, which shed a is hard to believe that Dillard could not have made million million (one billion) larvae into the ocean an entire chapter-length tale of the Polyphemus from just a single half-mile stretch of coast, and Moth episode, or any other tale she has told thus then she focuses with steady horror on egg-laying far . Perhaps she meant to emulate the floodwaters creatures—mantises, wasps, termites, fish, etc . themselves: swift moving and sweeping all in their These creatures lay eggs in unthinkable profusion; wake . Dillard likes to keep us guessing . the eggs hatch; out emerge innumerable creatures all of whom need to eat . Generally what they eat Chapter Ten: “Fecundity” is one another since, after all, that is what is most readily available . Sometimes they devour other Chapter Ten begins with a dream in which Dillard smaller species in great profusion . Mothers eat watches two Luna moths mating; then she watch- their own young; offspring devour their parents . es as the eggs hatch into a bed full of fish, a sight Dillard lays out example after example, her prose which horrifies her so that she screams and awak- becoming all the more distressed with each one . ens . Dillard says that she suspects the impulse or “seed” of the dream came from something she’d From fecundity Dillard turns to the seeming impos- seen earlier in the day, a “terrible yellow plant” sibility of survival at all, using the horsehair worm pushing its way up through the soil after the as her first example . The story of the gooseneck flood .48 The dream—and indeed dreaming itself— barnacle she reserves as the height of improbable Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 40 GUIDE A cluster of fish eggs. In Chapter Ten: “Fecundity,” Dillard focuses with steady horror on egg-laying creatures—mantises, wasps, termites, fish, etc, creatures that lay eggs in unthinkable profusion. survival . Her general question seems to be, “how one, although she phrases it with supreme ele- does anything survive long enough to die at all?” gance), she realizes that death is quite simply a part Halfway through the chapter she explains that of life . But she also comes to the realization that the death is a requirement of evolution; “the faster variety of ways creatures die—however grisly they death goes, the faster evolution goes ”. 49 “Evolution might seem—are part of the same “intricacy” she loves death,” she writes, and coming to terms with admired so much in the previous chapter . If death this takes some doing 50. Throughout the narrative can also be part of the general pizzazz of creation, Dillard has found ways to celebrate or at least cope then perhaps it is not so horrible after all . But, to with the more gruesome elements in nature; this achieve this kind of reconciliation with mortality, time she comes closest to throwing in the towel . she suggests that we must allow our perspective She concludes, eventually, that it is not nature that to be shaped by evolutionary biology as well as by is at fault for creating this system of freakish hor- a sense of the divine . rors, but rather human beings who persist in caring Chapter Eleven: “Stalking” so much about it . The frog may be dissolved, the lacewing may eat her young, but (writes Dillard) After experiencing the pessimism of Fecundity, the “I’m the one having the nightmares ”. 51 But not reader may balk upon discovering that the next caring is also not an option . After all, it is caring so chapter is titled “Stalking ”. But Chapter Eleven much about the natural world that created Pilgrim is a lighthearted chapter, perhaps even the most at Tinker Creek in the first place . Dillard manages cheerful of the entire book . At the end of Chapter the emotional distress by coming to two under- One Dillard said briefly, “I am an explorer, then, standings: first (a very common and traditional and I am also a stalker ”. 52 Here in the eleventh Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 41 German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg (l) and and Danish physicist Niels Bohr (r). At the end of Chapter Eleven, Dillard muses on quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which posits that at the subatomic level any attempt to know or measure certain phenomena, such as the velocity of an electron, will inevitably alter the outcome by changing the electron’s behavior. chapter, she finally goes into detail about her paris that they exist at all, and the greater hurrah is ticular kind of stalking, and what Dillard stalks is the actual moment of seeing them ”. 54 What is it not animal prey but what she calls “eye food ”. 53 about stalking muskrats that allows Dillard to shout The opening description of Eskimo hunting prac- “hurrah,” to throw off some of the melancholy that tices suggests a darker mood for the chapter (since gathered during the previous chapter? those creatures the Inuit stalk will indeed become The moral of the muskrat chapter has less to do meat), but once she leaves this hunt behind, the rest of the chapter is taken up with descriptions with muskrats themselves than with the process of of her close and steady observations of fish, a learning to stalk . While stalking, Dillard must will- heron, water striders, a dragonfly, and, of course, ingly give up her self-consciousness and become muskrats . Dillard appears to stalk muskrats for (as she did while petting the puppy in Chapter Six) simple amusement as well as for spiritual growth completely self-forgetful, entirely present in the and naturalistic edification . The way she describes here and now . If you want to see a muskrat you the experience is just plain fun; her prose is light, must be willing to crawl foolishly on your belly untroubled, and humorous for much of the chapter . like a snake, or scramble in an undignified manner Partly it may be that muskrats are in themselves back and forth across a bridge on your bottom; cute little mammals, but partly it is the love of the you must not worry too much about your human hunt and the thrill of finally catching sight of one . dignity, or else (as Dillard writes) that is all you will She writes, “The great hurrah about wild animals end up having: your dignity (and no muskrats) . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 42 GUIDE The muskrats are simply the occasion for Dillard to experience again this “tremendously invigorating” feeling of unself-consciousness 55. They are also a metaphor for living entirely in the present moment . The narrator’s ability to give up her dignity and become unself-conscious allows her a special insight into the natural world, for in a sense she is able to live momentarily like an animal, as an animal, on the same existential level . This self-forgetting also leads her to muse at the end of Chapter Eleven on quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which posits that at the subatomic level any attempt to know or measure certain phenomena, such as the velocity of an electron, will inevitably alter the outcome by changing the electron’s behavior . It is, thus, impossible to apprehend some things with complete neutrality . The beholder is always part of the scenario, linked to what is beheld by unbreakable—if invisible—bonds . Dillard draws a connection between the uncertainty principle and the stalking of muskrats . “The electron is a muskrat,” she writes, “it cannot be perfectly stalked ”. 56 Sometimes you see one, sometimes you don’t, and you can’t predict if and when and how you might . These words harken back to the words that she used all the way back in Chapter One: when it comes to nature’s deepest Painting of St. John of the Cross. In meanings, “We don’t know ”. Chapter Twelve, Dillard invokes this sixteenth-century Spanish mystic poet, Chapter Twelve: “Nightwatch” who wrote a poem titled “Dark Night of the Soul” in which he described the painful In Chapter Twelve, the speaker narrates a visit to journey of the soul through the world the Lucas property, a secluded stretch of valley as it tries to achieve union with God. near her own house by Tinker Creek . This chapter has more landscape description than other chapters and less episodic storytelling . After a “dark night of the soul” as a way to describe the description of the chaos of a field of leaping grass- tortured spiritual journey of any individual toward hoppers, the first powerful image in the chapter is some kind of spiritual revelation, be it divine or nat- the Lucas cottage, a one-room cabin in the center ural . The phrase has entered the English language of a meadow . From within that cottage appears almost as a proverb . This chapter has Dillard’s own the second image of the chapter . As the narrator version of a “dark night of the soul,” but it is less stands in the cottage looking out a broken window, a spiritual crisis (as are most of the dark nights in she sees framed by the window sill a goldfinch the Christian tradition) than a spiritual awakening . scattering thistle down just outside . We have seen When she settles in to sleep in the cottage, the this emphasis on framing already in the narrative . chapter becomes less descriptive and much more Several times already the narrator has referred (sometimes positively, sometimes negatively) to reflective . the experience of seeing the world as if captured Dillard’s dark night is filled, rather oddly, not within a camera frame . with scripture or biblical allusion or temptation In this chapter Dillard invokes the sixteenth-cen- or confession, but with eels . The American Eel tury Spanish mystic poet Saint John of the Cross, (Anguilla rostrata) seems a most peculiar ani- who wrote a poem titled “Dark Night of the Soul” mal to associate with a meadow in rural western in which he described the painful journey of the Virginia, yet Dillard’s narrative persona that night soul through the world as it tries to achieve union imagines the force that drives the long journey of with God . Numerous subsequent poets, religious eels from all their rivers, tributaries, and ponds thinkers, and philosophers have referred to this across America and Europe back to the Sargasso Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 43 Sea to spawn . She cites a passage from the writ- essarily have to work for a living but are created to ings of Edwin Way Teale, a mid-twentieth-century “simply steal and suck ”. 62 Second, she concludes American nature writer, in which he describes the that all this parasitism is a sign, a sign that the ways eels will pull themselves over dry land, from world is not whole but “rent,” a word she uses in one body of water to another, on their mission to two ways . First, the world is rent in the sense that it spawn . Perhaps, too, Dillard had in mind Rachel is torn, filled with holes . But Dillard also claims that Carson’s description of the eels’ voyage to the sea parasitism is the “rent” which all created things in the third part of her book Under the Sea Wind, pay for the blessing of being alive . Having our which describes the spawning journey of eels . In blood sucked by mosquitoes occasionally is simply any case, Dillard imagines what it might be like to the price we pay for a walk in the woods . see the spawning eels crossing the very meadow The title of Chapter Thirteen, “The Horns of the in which she finds herself . The leaping grasshop- Altar,” comes from several places in the Old pers, the floating thistle down, and the slithering Testament (also known as the Jewish Bible), among eels become similar, almost overlapping images . them Amos 3:14, Kings 2:28–29, Kings 1:49–51; During her “nightwatch” she feels herself to be Exodus 29:12, and Leviticus 4:7 . Biblical schol- moving freely in a way similar to these other forms ars agree that many sacrificial altars had horns of life . attached at the corners that would be grasped by Chapter Thirteen: supplicants in a request for sanctuary or dabbed with the blood of sacrificed animals as an atone- “The Horns of the Altar” ment for sin . Some scholars posit that sacrificial From eels we move to snakes . Dillard describes animals were tied to the horns to be sacrificed on coming upon a young copperhead snake near her the altar . Dillard does not explain her allusion, but it home and sits down first to admire it, and then seems very likely that she has some notion of sac- to wait it out . Copperheads are venomous—the rifice and sanctuary in mind here . She meditates younger, the more dangerous . While she waits, she throughout this chapter on eating and being eaten, gives us a bit of natural history and a brief story on the sacrifice of one life for the success of anoth- told to her by a switchboard operator . Her con- er, and she is aware of herself as potential food, as centration then fixes upon the tapered tail of the “a frayed and nibbled survivor” seeking some kind copperhead; she sees the creature as a “thickening of solace in the natural world . of the air spread from a tip, a rush into being ”. 57 She moves from parasitism to a series of stories As she watches the snake, a mosquito lands first about seeing other creatures in less-than-pris- on her and then on the copperhead . Not having tine condition—grasshoppers without antennae, hands to brush the mosquito away as Dillard had spiders missing one or more legs . The theme done moments before, the snake must submit to throughout is the same: nothing is entirely whole; having its blood sucked by the mosquito . Dillard everything has been pierced or torn or sliced in is riveted, and the sight triggers a question that some way by some other living thing, and every- has been haunting the narrative up to this point: thing that lives feeds on something else to survive . “Must everything whole be nibbled?”58 Nearly all It is a fitting theme for mid-September, when this the chapters have had some kind of consideration chapter takes place . “The summer is old,” Dillard of eating and being eaten; here she finally puts the writes .63 But at the end of the chapter she returns problem into words . It is a matter of wholeness, for once again to the tree with the lights in it and the snake, which she has described as a “chunk of insists that even if the whole world is old and tat- fullness,” is continually being “chomped ”. 59 tered, the light still shines . Once alert to the fact that “the world is more chomped than I’d dreamed,” Dillard sees evidence Chapter Fourteen: “Northing” of this nibbling and chomping (which are in fact In Chapter Fourteen we move quickly through much more antonyms than synonyms, but Dillard the end of September, all of October, and into uses them nearly interchangeably here) every- November . Dillard’s seasonally appropriate main where .60 The late summer leaves are chomped; topic is the restless and relentless urge to migrate, a snapping turtle is infested with leeches; a fox an urge she shares with the animals and insects dies of mange . Dillard detours into a “whirlwind she observes around her . There are few solitary survey” of numerous insect parasites—lice, ticks, creatures or trees in this chapter; almost every- fleas, mosquitoes, etc 61. (Most readers must feel a thing that she sees, she sees en masse: crowds bit itchy at this point .) From this litany of gruesome of ants; flocks of goldfinches, titmice, and rob- horrors Dillard concludes, first, that “the creator is ins; hordes of woolly bear caterpillars; a herd of no puritan”: in other words, creatures do not nec- caribou . (It feels a bit like one of those grammar Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 44 GUIDE Model of an altar used for animal sacrifices. Biblical scholars agree that many sacrificial altars had horns attached at the corners that would be grasped by supplicants in a request for sanctuary or dabbed with the blood of sacrificed animals as an atonement for sin. lessons in collective nouns: a pod of whales, a state of razor-sharp simple being, Dillard elects murder of crows, a gaggle of geese, etc ). The cen- simply (once again) to wait . The creatures can tral event of the chapter is Dillard’s description of migrate while she waits on the bridge for winter to the Monarch butterfly migration, a five-day inun- come to her . dation which leaves her feeling as if the year itself The end of the chapter launches us forward, were “molting and shedding” as leaves fall thick toward the book’s conclusion . At this point Dillard 64 and fast from the trees . introduces a theme which has been common The narrator shares this restlessness, certainly, enough throughout the narrative but which will but perverts it somewhat: instead of feeling the take on new centrality in the final chapter: the instinct to go south, she wants to go north . By this theme of religion . She refers directly to God twice point in the book, we probably aren’t surprised by in the final paragraphs of “Northing ”. First, she ref- such an irony . It is unclear why the north calls her erences a psalm in which the God of the Israelites so strongly, why the same agitation that propels arrives like a “consuming fire…a mighty tempest,” the creatures she sees to go south (or hunker down and she draws the analogy between that divine and hibernate) makes her want to head toward arrival and the arrival of winter, or simply the force 67 “Point Barrow, Mount McKinley, Hudson’s Bay ”. 65 of nature coming onward . Eventually she tells us that what she wants is not a Second, she recalls the ancient Israelite rite of literal “northing” (that is, a movement toward the thanksgiving, in which a priest would come to the northern latitudes) but rather a metaphoric north- altar and wave a dead ram’s breast toward God ing, which she defines as “a reduction, a shedding, as an offering . This “wave breast” will reappear a sloughing off ”. One cannot help being reminded in the final chapter, and it will be connected with of Thoreau’s exhortation in Walden, “Simplify, sim- another Israelite offering, the “heave shoulder,” as plify!”66 The image she uses to describe the state two ways (among many) of offering thanks for the she wishes to achieve is that of a seashell worn beauties Dillard finds in the world . Once again we supremely thin by sand and waves . To achieve that see Dillard’s fixation with the literal dimensions of Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 45 from Heraclitus at the start of the book . The narrator then informs the reader, “Today is the winter solstice,” thereby invoking the pagan Yule holiday and Christmas—hence death and rebirth 68. It is a fitting moment at which to end her pilgrimage and her narrative . Shortly thereafter she exclaims, “my God what a world . There is no accounting for one second of it .”69 The narrative then moves elatedly, almost ecstatically, through a walk around the area of Tinker Creek during which the narrator recounts the major episodes and vignettes of the previous fourteen chapters . There’s something of the high school English paper conclusion about this chapter, as if the author wished to summarize her experiences and insights by listing them and then deriving some form of overarching wisdom from them . This retrospective approach, however, is less nostalgic than self-reflexive; the narrator still wishes to apprehend spiritual meaning in the natural world, but now she lists her earlier attempts to do so and builds to a crescendo . Instead of wisdom she reaps a harvest of uncertainty, passionate questioning of divine purpose, and more questions about the nature of the divine . The central event of “Chapter The tone certainly seems to border on the hereti- Fourteen: Northing” is Dillard’s cal, if not the blasphemous, as the narrator asks, description of the Monarch butterfly migration, a five-day inundation. “How many people have prayed for their daily bread and famished? They die their daily death as utterly as did the frog, people, played with, dab- 70 faith and worship and with their peculiar basis in bled upon, when God knows they loved their life ”. domestic animals . In her own inimitable manner Surely this is a strange kind of religiosity that bor- Dillard makes subtle connections between natural ders on impugning the deity and then withdraws phenomena, such as seasonal migration, and both into statements about the impossibility of knowing the spirit and the letter of religious practice . It is as our purpose here on earth . Whatever spiritual or if she is seeking to ground her faith in the natural religious position we take vis-à-vis Dillard’s vehe- world—or to ground nature in religiosity . Either ment interrogation of the divine, we cannot miss way, she outlines a theology of immanence . the fact that her prose is animated with a passionate energy that flows like a wellspring of words Chapter Fifteen: and feelings . “I stood alone,” she writes, “and the “The Waters of Separation” world swayed . I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs ”. She catalogues those The closing chapter of Pilgrim follows the penul- signs in this final chapter—bloody paw prints, dead timate one in moving sharply in the direction of empty frog, creek, mountain, landscape, puppy, religion, beginning with an epigraph from the Koran suffering, and religious rituals—and still concludes, that reads, “They will question thee concerning “I am standing lost…”71 All she has is her own what they should expend . Say: ‘the abundance ’”. vibrant language of “praise,” the last word in the This is fittingly enigmatic, not unlike the epigraph book 72. Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 46 GUIDE T I O N E C I I S I Selected Poetry and Short Works of Literature

Introduction frame the way we think about poetry, history, and human behavior, that will help you interpret and In this short works of literature section, you will understand the significance of the short literary find eight poems and one nonfiction prose narra- works that follow . Just after the keywords section, tive following a list of keywords and brief author you will find brief author biographies and then the biographies . Each of these nine texts is accompa- short literary selections themselves . The short nied by analysis and a brief contextual discussion . texts are arranged chronologically, beginning with These selections have been chosen and arranged a sonnet by the English Romantic poet William to represent one set of literary responses, in the Wordsworth and ending with poems by the liv- English-speaking world, to the accelerating human ing poets Jorie Graham and Lucia Perillo . After mastery of the Earth’s resources, to the Industrial the short texts, you will find the end notes and a Revolution, and to human destruction of land- selected bibliography of works cited, which will scapes and ecosystems in modern times . Each help guide you in any further reading you might short text gives literary shape to a writer’s insights choose to do . about the role of human beings as stewards of this planet; each articulates a response to human The short texts featured here vary considerably encroachment on the natural environment; and in terms of literary form, thematic content, and each, either directly or indirectly, offers insights tone . Some, such as the second poem by William about technological innovation, new ideas, and Wordsworth and Walt Whitman’s “Passage humankind’s ability to harness nature’s energy in to India,” express optimism about the poten- various forms . tial of human ingenuity and progress; they see the achievements of the Industrial Revolution as Some of the writers represented in this section ushering in a new age of global connectivity, com- focus on energy captured by machines (such as munication, and prosperity . Others, in contrast, steam engines, trains, and backhoes) to perform such as the poems by Edwin Muir, Sarah Teasdale, work and modify the environment . Others take as Robinson Jeffers, and Jorie Graham, comment their topic the historical energies involved in global much more skeptically about the effects of techno- networks of trade and communication . Still others logical innovation and the course of human history . attempt to mediate the frightening effects of the Still others, particularly the selections from John rapid expansion of human civilization in modern Muir and Edwin Muir (no relation), offer positive times and the corresponding transformation of visions about the possibility of gaining distance, rural regions . All of the texts included in this sec- in time and space, from urban-industrial centers of tion, thus, offer some form of literary statement human activity and reconnecting with the earth . As about the relationship of human beings with the you will see, they do so in radically different ways . biophysical environment . Edwin Muir’s “The Horses,” written in 1952, is a Immediately following this introduction you will post-apocalyptic poem about the aftermath of an find a number of keywords followed by definitions imagined nuclear catastrophe . This poem reminds of about a paragraph or two each . These keywords us that not all new ideas about energy, and not all are important conceptual categories, words that technological innovations, are for the best . In a Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 47 sense, then, Muir’s poem engages in a sort of his- is to encourage you to think critically about such torical poetic dialogue with those of Wordsworth issues—inconsistencies, gaps, differences—for lit- and Whitman, for while the two nineteenth-century erary study has no easy answers . poets celebrate aspects of the Industrial Revolution (in the poems presented here), Muir responds What unites these selections is their authors’ mas- to industrial modernity in a decidedly negative terful use of literary form and technique in the way . Similarly, the most recent poems—one of service of creating works of art that make powerful them published less than a decade ago—employ statements about the environmental and historical terms and insights from science to reflect on effects of human technological innovation . Each how humankind’s material mastery of this plan- of the short texts offers profound insights on our et alters physical reality and consciousness, not attempts to harness, control, or modify natural necessarily for the better . While Graham’s poem forces . Each of these works enjoins us to question “Positive Feedback Loop” laments the potential- the nature of historical “progress” and raises diffi- ly apocalyptic effects of anthropogenic climate cult questions about human development . Do the change, Perillo’s brief poem “To the Field of Scotch technological advances of the last two centuries or Broom That Will Be Buried by the New Wing of so constitute an improvement for humankind (by the Mall” offers a verbal snapshot of a quintes- raising the standard of living and diminishing the sentially postmodern experience, not condemning natural obstacles to travel, communication, and or condoning technology, but vividly capturing its development)? Or, by contrast, are the innovations dizzying effects in verse . Thus, these short works of the Industrial Revolution and the era of techno- represent a diversity of literary perspectives on logical modernity in fact a slowly unfolding global this year’s curricular theme . catastrophe? We can choose to take one side or the Not only do the selections included here offer other in our responses, but we might also decide differing visions of (and commentary on) human that the best response is not an either/or but a innovation and its role in historical progress (is both/and . Are we doomed or saved by technolo- human progress a myth?), as well as on the human gy—or both? transformation of the natural environment, but they also differ markedly in form . Some are brief Keywords lyric poems, while others are longer and less technically constrained . Two of the poems are Romanticism sonnets, with a strict meter and a formal rhyme Romanticism was a movement in literature, music, scheme; several others are written in free verse, with no fixed rhyme scheme, varying line lengths, and art that emphasized emotionality, energy, and irregular stanzas . Another is a nonfiction experimentation with the forms of self-expression, prose narrative—a (presumably) true story about and personal experience over tradition, control, the author’s experiences in the Sierra Nevada normative values, and received opinions and Mountains of California . There are notable syn- forms . Romanticism is generally seen as origi- ergies and overlaps between the texts, just as nating in late-eighteenth-century Germany and there are clear differences . Walt Whitman’s free then moving to England, the rest of Europe, and verse frequently resembles John Muir’s ecstatic the United States in the early nineteenth century . prose, whereas William Wordsworth’s adaptation Romanticism can refer to the historical period of the sonnet to express a spiritual appreciation from approximately 1780 to 1830 (in Germany for nature or optimism about technological prog- and Britain), and in France, the United States, and ress differs strikingly from Jorie Graham’s highly elsewhere circa 1800–61 . Romanticism was char- disciplined use of free verse to express pessimism acterized by a focus on personal experience and about technology’s historical impact . Although we emotional expression (in contrast to the conven- use the phrase “free verse” (useful for describ- tional, socially oriented writings of the so-called ing much modern poetry) for both poets’ works, neoclassical period that preceded it); an interest Graham’s free verse differs radically, in terms of in the sublime, the gothic, psychology, folklore, literary form, from Whitman’s . So, too, does her position vis-à-vis the technological advancement common people, nature; and new forms of artis- of humanity (quite starkly) . Indeed, Whitman and tic expression . Representative Romantic poets Graham use free verse so differently that the phrase include William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, scarcely seems capable of describing both poets’ William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe work—which raises important questions about the Shelley, and John Keats; prose writers include conceptual categories and approaches we use to Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey, analyze literature . One goal of this resource guide Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 48 GUIDE Palestinian scholar Edward W. Said argued that the “knowledge” produced by Orientalists bolstered (or created) the ideological justification for European imperialism in North Africa, Asia Minor, and the rest of Asia.

Tennyson, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Algernon Swinburne . Orientalism Orientalism refers to an ideologically charged mode of thinking about Asia and North Africa and the nineteenth-century study of Near Eastern, Middle Eastern, and Far Eastern nations and peoples . Orientalism is marked by the belief that Asian Portrait of Queen Victoria by Alexander and North African peoples—in all their diversity— Bassano. English literature, especially share certain characteristics that contrast markedly poetry and the novel, flourished with the inhabitants of the West, including a ten- during the Victorian Period. dency toward political servility and despotism, Image © National Portrait Gallery, London. unchanging cultures and outlooks, an inability to innovate, and a kind of stasis caused by the iner- tia of longstanding civilizations . These negative Victorian Period stereotypes about “the Orient” and “the Oriental Mind” produced a widespread condescension The Victorian period, as its name implies, was among Europeans toward people of Asiatic (and defined by the reign of British Queen Victoria I North African) origin . Palestinian scholar Edward (1819–1901) . This period is notable for the expan- W . Said argued, in his seminal book Orientalism, sion of the British Empire over approximately that this complex of ideas and attitudes constitut- one-fourth of the Earth’s surface as well as for the ed a kind of ethnocentric posturing in the guise of passage of numerous reform laws by Parliament . an objective “science” or field of scholarship, and The political era corresponded with the height that the “knowledge” produced by Orientalists in of the Industrial Revolution, in which English fact bolstered (or created) the ideological justifi- literature flourished, especially poetry and the cation for European imperialism in North Africa, novel . The Victorian Period is often (perhaps Asia Minor, and the rest of Asia, particularly in the mistakenly) considered a golden age for British latter half of the nineteenth century and the early civilization . Notable Victorian novelists include twentieth century . Charles Dickens, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Anthony Trollope, William Makepeace Thackeray, Sonnet George Eliot (Marian Evans), and the early Joseph A sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem, made Conrad . Victorian poets of note include Elizabeth famous by the fourteenth-century Italian poet Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Alfred Lord Francesco Petrarcha, known in English as Francis Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 49 a concluding couplet (two lines), generally rhyming A-B-A-B C-D-C-D E-F-E-F G-G, although many variations exist, including admixtures of the Italian and English forms . In early modern Europe (also known as the European Renaissance), the majority of sonnets were love poems—from those written by Petrarch to those of Sir Philip Sidney in his sonnet sequence “Astrophil and Stella .” William Shakespeare addressed his celebrated sonnet sequence to two love objects, a young man and a “dark lady ”. These are some of the best-known poems in English and are poetic vessels for the expression of love and desire . Free Verse Free verse is poetry (or, more properly, verse) that is not constrained by conventional formal restric- tions of rhyme, meter, or line and stanza length . Free verse eschews traditional conventions of form . Free verse is not formless, however; shaped to its subject matter, free verse derives form from original patterns that the poet creates . Like all verse (and indeed all art), free verse relies on repetition, which is the basis of aesthetic form . Historically, free verse was pioneered by and remains associated with the nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman, although prior poets and some of The fourteenth-century Italian poet his contemporaries also experimented with it . As Francesco Petrarcha, known in English a major verse form, free verse came of age with as Francis Petrarch. Petrarch’s sonnets the modernist poets both as a means of achieving were widely known and imitated. new forms of expression and as a critique of conventional forms .

Petrarch, with a strict rhyme scheme and a finite Lyric set of thematic conventions . Even before Petrarch, A lyric is a short poem that generally expresses the sonnet was associated with expressions of a single emotion or sentiment (love, anguish, love and desire, and throughout the European sadness) by means of literary tropes (such as met- Renaissance (c . 1400–1650) the sonnet proved aphor and metonymy) and figures of speech (such an extremely popular form for poets writing love as personification and prosopopeia) . A lyric poem poetry in many languages . The first poets to is a distillation of sentiment, thought, and lan- write sonnets in English began, in the early six- guage . The term “lyric” derives from the word for teenth century, by translating Petrarch’s poems . an ancient Greek instrument, the lyre, which was In adapting the sonnet from Italian to English, strummed and accompanied by song . Generally a they innovated with the sonnet form, creating a lyric poem has a single speaker who reveals his or distinctly English version . Accordingly, sonnets her thoughts and feelings about an intensely felt are grouped into two categories based on rhyme idea or experience . Lyric poems can take many scheme: Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnets and English forms, including the sonnet, villanelle, and haiku . (or Shakespearean) sonnets . They can be written with heroic couplets, common measure, alexandrines, or any number of metric An Italian sonnet is divided into an octave (a forms . section of eight lines), which rhymes A-B-B-A A-B- B-A, and a sestet (six lines), which rhymes either Speaker C-D-C-D-C-D or C-D-E-C-D-E . This structure cre- The speaker is the voice or persona (from the ates a strong “turn” (known as the “volta”) at the Greek word for mask) in which an author or poet end of the octave, such that the sestet becomes chooses to deliver a narrative or poem . In poetry, a kind of riposte . The English sonnet, developed the poet is not always (or usually) assumed to be later, has a distinctly different structure, contain- the speaker of the poem; poets employ different ing three quatrains (units of four lines each) and kinds of speakers, including animals (personifica- Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 50 GUIDE tion), inanimate objects (prosopopeia), members of the opposite sex, or characters with whom the author or poet does not necessarily agree (or even like, on occasion) . Thus, you should never assume that the speaker of a poem is identical to the author of the poem . Narrative Storytelling, either in prose or verse, with the recounting of a story; a form of verbal expression with a beginning, middle, and end, a plot, character development, and a narrative voice or persona is a narrative . Novels are long prose narratives; short stories are short prose narratives; epic poems are long verse narratives; and any number of poems contain short narratives in verse . Not all literature consists of narratives: lyric poems, for example, rarely contain complete narratives . In general, narrative poetry and lyric poetry are treated as quite distinct forms of poetic expression . Literary interpretation often involves the discovery of multiple narratives in a text, often hidden or implied ones (and sometimes counter-narratives) . Pastoral

The term pastoral refers to literature or art set in “As You Like It,” Act IV Scene 1, by Walter the countryside that celebrates rural life and either Howell Deverell. Shakespeare’s play As explicitly or implicitly compares it with urban life . You Like It was a very popular comedy It is a literary mode (not a genre) with a consistent written in the pastoral mode. set of features, including a rural or bucolic setting, Photo Credit: Birmingham Museums Trust. animals, poetry, and conversations between characters who have retreated from the city . Leisure (Latin otium; pastoral is “otiose” art) is an import- form of anthropomorphism is personification, ant aspect of pastoral, which can be traced to the or treating non-human entities as humans, with celebration of rural life, particularly that of shep- human identities . However, not all anthropomor- herds, often associated with Arcadia (or Arkadia, a phism is personification, a kind of metaphor that region in Greece) by the classical poet Theocritus treats a non-human object, animal, or idea as and later Virgil . In the European Renaissance, if it had a human identity; other forms abound, pastoral was a popular mode for much art; for and it can be a tricky business drawing a line example, The Faithful Shepherd of Guarini was an between anthropomorphic and non-anthropomor- extremely popular romance, as was Shakespeare’s phic language . play As You Like It, a comedy written in the pastoral mode . Later, in Romantic and Victorian literature, Anthropocentrism pastoral became associated with a bygone way of Not to be confused with anthropomorphism, life and with rural landscapes that contrasted with the effects of the Industrial Revolution . anthropocentrism is the idea that human beings are the center of the universe and the most import- Anthropomorphism ant living things in it, above all other forms of life . Anthropomorphism refers to the attribution of Anthropocentrism is a human-centered perspec- human qualities to non-human entities . It is a rhe- tive, an inability to alter one’s outlook from one torical strategy often employed by poets to locate that privileges all things human . Anthropocentrism emotion (or “affect”) in an object or scene . A is often blamed for the human destruction of the writer anthropomorphizes animals, vegetables, or biophysical environment . minerals by giving them human attributes, such as Anthropogenic speech, a name, or an individual identity . Talking animals are one example of anthropomorphism . Anthropogenic is an adjective describing some- (Children’s literature is full of talking animals and thing that has been caused or generated by human other forms of anthropomorphism ). An extreme beings or human behavior . Thus, the term must be Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 51 followed by a noun, such as “anthropogenic climate change ”. Anthropogenic phenomena include pollution, such as smog, acid rain, and radioactive waste, and global climate change, ocean acidifi- cation, coral reef bleaching, anoxic dead zones (such as in the Gulf of Mexico), nitrogen load- ing and eutrophication (overfertilization) in fresh water and salt water bodies, overextraction of resources (including mines, fisheries, and logging operations), the proliferation of non-native species in threatened ecosystems, habitat loss, and many other environmental issues . Deep Ecology This phrase describes a branch of the current environmental movement that posits the inherent value of all living things and opposes anthropocentrism . Adherents of Deep Ecology argue that the needs, wants, and appetites of human beings should not dictate the way we value other forms of life, and that all living things have inherent rights . As the phrase suggests, this philosophy is informed by the scientific discipline of ecology . It is “deep” in that it looks beyond a merely anthropocentric perspective and enjoins thinking that is not merely anthropomorphic . Deep Ecology is a philo- Portrait of William Wordsworth by sophical reaction to the destruction of non-human Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1842. Much of life on this planet and a set of values that aspires to Wordsworth’s poetry celebrates nature for its beauty and moral power. decenter humankind from the cosmos, and instead espouses an ecologically based system of values Image © National Portrait Gallery, London. that would put human life and other forms of life on the same plain of existence . literary expression and shaped literary tastes Author Biographies for generations . In it Wordsworth and Coleridge attempted, as Wordsworth put it in the preface to William Wordsworth the second edition, to use “the real language of The first two short works in this section are poems men” in place of time-worn conventional poetic by the Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770– language . 1850), who was born in Lancashire, in northwestern The poems in the Lyrical Ballads are frequently England . Wordsworth is closely associated with a cited to exemplify the Romantic celebration of beautiful part of that region known as the Lake nature, and Wordsworth himself is widely viewed District . Much of his poetry celebrates nature for its as a kind of proto-environmentalist—a champion beauty and moral power; for Romantic poets, the of nature and a critic of human industry . One of natural world revealed profound meaning, often Wordsworth’s best-known lines, “we murder to divine purpose or the poet’s soul . Wordsworth’s dissect,” criticizes the destruction of life that sci- celebrated poems about the English countryside, ence entails . In another poem, Wordsworth wrote, which often recount the lessons he has learned “One impulse from a vernal wood/ May teach you from natural settings and enjoin the reader to more of Man,/ Of moral evil and of good,/ Than become closer to nature, have inspired genera- all the sages can,” which states quite clearly that tions of poets, hikers, naturalists, and readers . nature has more to teach us than all of human With the collaboration of his youthful friend knowledge 73. These are just two examples of the Samuel Taylor Coleridge (who penned The Rime kind of sentiment that many pro-environmental of the Ancient Mariner), Wordsworth published a readers have admired in Wordsworth’s writings . small collection of poems in 1798 known as Lyrical The poet mastered a number of poetic forms, and Ballads . This slim volume would, in time, become his poetic career spanned several periods of British one of the most important poetry collections ever history . His magnum opus is widely considered published in the English language; it transformed to be The Prelude, a long, unfinished narrative Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 52 GUIDE With his American contemporary Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman is widely regarded as one of the two most important American poets of the nineteenth century . In striking contrast to Dickinson, who is known for her short poems characterized by intense, condensed expression, Whitman appeals to readers with his grand, effusive verses, which capture the energy and enthusiasm of the young America, and for his musical celebration of the self as a corporate entity containing multitudes (as he put it) . One of his best-known statements is this: “I contradict myself? So I contradict myself . I am large . I contain multitudes ”. Whitman’s voice strives to speak for the young republic during a period of rapid expansion and enormous trib- ulation: the middle decades of the nineteenth century . This collective voice rings clearly throughout the poem “Song of Myself,” which may well be Whitman’s most famous . In “Passage to India” the same grand multi-part voice can be heard . Like Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Leaves of Grass has found a far more sympathetic audience in the twentieth century than the nineteenth—in part because the rise of modernism made free verse more acceptable and in part because Whitman’s social outlook and attitudes have become more acceptable in recent times . In the 1950s and 60s the so-called Beat poets, such as Gary Snyder Walt Whitman, as photographed by and Allen Ginsberg, were inspired by Whitman . Mathew Brady sometime between 1855 Ginsburg, author of the collection Howl, explicitly and 1865. Whitman is widely regarded as emulated Whitman and his work—to the point of one of the two most important American styling himself as a latter-day Whitman . poets of the nineteenth century. John Muir Born in Scotland into a family that immigrated to poem addressed to Coleridge and published post- the United States when he was only three, John humously . The poems included in this resource Muir (1838–1914) grew up on his family’s farm guide, both sonnets, were written at very different near Portage, Wisconsin, and later roamed the periods in the poet’s life and differ markedly from North American continent . His parents were strict- each other . ly religious Scots Presbyterians, and the young Walt Whitman John could recite the New Testament and most of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible) by heart Born in the town of Huntington, New York, to at an early age . Later, however, he would express parents with Quaker sympathies, Walt Whitman his skepticism about organized religion and con- (1819–92) worked as a journalist, teacher, and clerk ventional accounts of the creator, instead finding and served as a volunteer nurse in the American spiritual fulfillment in the wilderness and a theol- Civil War (1861–65) . The first edition of Leaves ogy of immanence (the presence of the deity in of Grass, which he self-published (using his own the present world) closely linked to Romanticism . money) in 1855, was seen as scandalous by many Although he attended the University of Wisconsin- readers because of its frankness about sexuality Madison, studying botany, chemistry, and geology, and desire . Whitman’s sexuality has been much Muir never earned a degree there . Like Henry David discussed, and in all likelihood he was, in today’s Thoreau, he was known for his perpetual wander- terms, a homosexual . Whitman continued to revise ing in the woods and fields . his magnum opus until his death, in Camden, During the American Civil War Muir went to Canada New Jersey, in 1892 . Since then its literary rep- to avoid the draft . He later walked from Indiana to utation, along with that of its author, has grown Florida, suffered a bout of malaria, and then took significantly . a ship to Cuba . After shipping from there to New Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 53 Sara Teasdale was a very successful poet in her own day who died tragically and is now mostly forgotten.

John Muir, as photographed by Professor Francis M. Fritz in 1907. A great American organization dedicated to promoting the preserva- outdoorsman, traveler, writer, and passionate tion of wilderness . advocate of wild places, Muir is remembered Sara Teasdale for his love of the California countryside. A very successful poet in her own day who died tragically and is now mostly forgotten, Sara York, he sailed to San Francisco . He soon departed Teasdale (1884–1933) was a native of St . Louis, San Francisco for the inland mountains, a region Missouri . She struggled with health problems with which he would become forever associated throughout her life, and, as an adult, with difficult and where he would make his name, roaming relationships . Teasdale began publishing poems in around observing the wonders of the California her twenties and subsequently came out with several highly successful collections, including Rivers landscape . to the Sea (1915), her third, which was a bestseller Muir’s writings about the natural world and his on the eve of the American entrance into the First travels in wild places have been popular for over World War . Her next collection, Love Songs (pub- a century, and deservedly so . Part of their appeal lished 1917), won the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for poetry . lies in the vivid juxtaposition of precise descrip- By this time Teasdale had married and moved to tion, informed by the natural sciences, with an New York City . She later divorced her husband . effusive appreciation for natural phenomena and In 1933 she committed suicide by an overdose of sleeping pills and was buried in her home town the sublime . Muir’s energetic prose is matched of St . Louis . The poem included in this guide, by his love for the manifestations of energy in “There Will Come Soft Rains,” imagines a world nature—snow, winds, lightning, storms, and water after humankind has been wiped out . This poem in its various states of matter . A great American inspired the science fiction writer Ray Bradbury to outdoorsman, traveler, writer, and passionate write an extremely popular short story of the same advocate of wild places, Muir is remembered for title in 1950 . Bradbury’s story imagines a post-nu- his love of the California countryside, and among clear world in which humanity, as in Teasdale’s his other legacies he started the Sierra Club, an poem, has been annihilated and only its techno- Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 54 GUIDE logical inventions remain—to be slowly overgrown by nature . Edwin Muir While John Muir was an American naturalist, Edwin Muir (1887–1959) was a Scottish man of letters . The latter man was a critic, journalist, novelist, translator, memoirist, and poet born on the Orkney Islands, a large archipelago just off the northern tip of Scotland (Caithness) . His family of tenant farmers worked in different locales among the Orkneys, struggling to pay the rent . When he was fourteen, Muir’s family lost their farm in Deerness and moved to the large Scottish city of Glasgow, a manufacturing hub of the Industrial Revolution famous for steel production and shipbuilding, in hopes of better financial prospects . This transition could not have been worse: suddenly, the young Muir moved from a bucolic rural setting to a heavily industrial urban one, and Muir’s parents and two brothers died shortly thereafter . The loss of the family farm and subsequent move from the traditional agricultural setting of the Orkneys to the urban jungle of Glasgow affected the future poet profoundly, and it is in this context that we should understand Muir’s pessimism about the fruits of modernity, industry, and technology . He would later write of himself, in his diary:

I was born before the Industrial Revolution, Edwin Muir, photograph by Howard Coster, and am now about two hundred years old . 1945. Muir was a Scottish critic, journalist, But I have skipped a hundred and fifty of novelist, translator, memoirist, and poet. them . I was really born in 1737, and till I was Image © National Portrait Gallery, London. fourteen no time-accidents happened to me . Then in 1751 I set out from Orkney for Glasgow . When I arrived I found that it was form characteristic of contemporaneous modernist not 1751, but 1901, and that a hundred and poets . fifty years had been burned up in my two day’s journey . But I myself was still in 1751, After working as a clerk and later a journalist and and remained there for a long time . All my critic, Muir married Wilhelmina Anderson and life since I have been trying to overhaul that moved to London . Later they would live together invisible leeway . No wonder I am obsessed for a considerable time on the European continent . with Time . (Diary, 1937–39 ). The husband and wife team translated an important body of continental literature from German These sentiments can help us make sense of (a language Muir had learned on his own), most Muir’s relative optimism in “The Horses” about a notably the fiction of Franz Kafka, into English . post-apocalyptic world . Muir also wrote influential works of literary schol- Edwin Muir lived through two world wars and in arship, including The Structure of the Novel, which many countries . His cosmopolitanism and aware- remains an influential study . Muir received many ness of the ravages of war can be seen in “The honors late in life, including a position on the fac- Horses,” his poem included in this guide . For Muir, ulty at Harvard University . a pastoral way of life that evokes the Garden of Robinson Jeffers Eden is something to be wished for, and a transition from a modern, industrial, urban lifestyle One of California’s best-known poets, Robinson to an agricultural one is not necessarily a change Jeffers (1887–1962) was a controversial figure in to be lamented, as we shall see . His poetry gen- his own lifetime, having graced the cover of Time erally eschewed the radical experimentation with magazine early in his career only to become a kind Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 55 A serious student of the classics (Greek and Latin literature) from childhood, Jeffers was deeply interested in epics and tragedy throughout his career, at one time translating the Medea by Euripides . But it is more for his lyric poetry, particularly poems that bespeak an incipient environmentalism, that Jeffers is known today . Jeffers’ poetry influenced the thinking of many prominent figures in the environmental movement that gained momentum after his death, including Gary Snyder, Edward Abbey, and other prominent nature writers and nature poets . Some have seen Jeffers as a precursor to the Deep Ecology movement, which firmly rejects anthropocentrism in favor of a revaluation of (and increased appreciation for) non-human animals and what anthropologist David Abram calls the “more-than-human world ”. Jeffers’ philosophy of “inhumanism,” derived in part from the writings of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), rejects humankind’s solipsism (utter self-involvement) and anthropocentrism and instead affirms a kind of general detachment from superficial or trivial human emotions, such as hatred, egotism, mis- anthropy, misogyny, and materialism, as well as from the material acquisitiveness, political par- tisanship, and internecine bickering that he felt afflicted the social and political realms . Other poets who admired Jeffers’ work include Charles One of California’s best-known poets, Bukowski, and Nobel-Prize winning Polish poet Robinson Jeffer’s poetry influenced Czeslaw Milosz . Jeffers remains quite popular in the thinking of many prominent figures Japan and Eastern Europe . His longtime home in in the environmental movement that Carmel, California, has become a pilgrimage site gained momentum after his death. for environmental writers and activists . Photo/Louis Fleckenstein; courtesy of Tor House Foundation. Jorie Graham Jorie Graham (born 1950) is an American poet and is the Boylston Professor at Harvard University, of ideological outcast for his isolationism during where she has taught creative writing and liter- World War II . The son of a Presbyterian minister ature courses for many years . The fact that she in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Jeffers is now associ- succeeded the Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner ated with the area around Carmel and Monterey, Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor tells us, California, not far from the dramatic landscapes of first, that she is an enormously successful writer Point Lobos and Big Sur . His reputation has waxed and teacher and, second, that her work has been and waned since the early twentieth century . produced almost entirely in an academic context . Because of his refusal to support the war effort, Born into a privileged family and raised overseas critics who celebrated his literary success before and in New York, Graham studied at the Sorbonne the war later wrote scathing articles about him, in Paris and continues to live for part of the year in even accusing him of tacit support for the Nazis . France . In fact, his philosophical outlook resembles that Graham has published numerous collections of of John Muir, with whom he shared a strict Scots poetry, including The Dream of a Unified Field: Presbyterian heritage, a profound love of the wil- Selected Poems 1974–94, which won the Pulitzer derness, and a particular affinity for the landscapes Prize for poetry in 1996 . Among her other honors, of California . His poems frequently depict the stark Graham held the position of Chancellor of the beauty of California’s landscapes before—and at American Academy of Poets from 1997 to 2003 the start of—the massive mid-twentieth-century and has been a judge for poetry prizes . Graham’s population explosion . poems have been repeatedly recognized for their Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 56 GUIDE Poet Lucia Perillo. Perillo’s work is deeply informed by science, and her meditation on death and mortality offers a critical look at contemporary life through the scientifically informed lens of a serious lifetime student of the natural world.

Photograph of poet Jorie Graham, 2010. in poetry . Perillo grew up in the New York metro- Graham is an enormously successful writer and teacher, and her poems politan area and attended McGill University as an have been repeatedly recognized for undergraduate . She later earned an M .A . in English their innovative use of literary form. from Syracuse University and worked for the Photo ©2008–2013 Jorie Graham. United States Fish and Wildlife Service . Her scien- All Rights Reserved. tific studies as an undergraduate and her work as a field scientist resonate in her poetry, which often takes a hard look at issues that are frequently treat- innovative use of literary form . Graham’s collection ed sentimentally . (This is clearly the case in her Sea Change (2008) consists of a series of poems poem “To a Field of Scotch Broom ”). Perillo has about the environment, global climate change, lived and taught at several institutions of higher and the increasingly dire condition of the world’s learning in Washington State and Illinois, settings oceans . “Positive Feedback Loop” is from this that also show up in her poems . She has been pub- collection . Sea Change engages in an overarch- lished in numerous prominent magazines, such as ing dialogue with William Shakespeare’s late play The New Yorker and Orion Magazine, and she con- The Tempest, which takes place on an unmapped tinues to produce notable poetry . Perillo currently island and contains the memorable characters Prospero, Miranda, Caliban, and Ariel . Graham resides in western Washington state . Perillo’s work uses the characters and themes of The Tempest as is deeply informed by science, and her medita- the basis for her meditations on the implications tion on death and mortality offers a critical look of global climate change for the condition of the at contemporary life through the scientifically world’s oceans and of humanity . informed lens of a serious lifetime student of the natural world . One would not, however, mistake Lucia Perillo her work for that of a nature writer . And, with her Lucia Perillo (born 1958) has published six books of scientifically informed, unsentimental perspective poetry and won or been nominated for numerous on human life and the physical world, she often awards and fellowships, including a MacArthur gives stark insight into the physical vicissitudes of Fellowship and a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize being mortal . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 57 CTED W When he refers to “the world” in the first line, LE OR SE K Wordsworth does not mean “the planet” or “the • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • globe” but something more like the French term, le monde, which literally means “the world” but con- notes humanity—the human world, or humankind . In a sense the first line says that we are too caught up in our concern for the limited and limiting ways The World Is Too Much With Us of people . “Late and soon” implies “always,” but the diction also conveys a sense of negativity that By William Wordsworth is purely human . To be “late” is a human failing; to THE world is too much with us; late and soon, need something done “soon” is a human urgency . Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— “Getting and spending,” another binary like “late Little we see in Nature that is ours; and soon,” also conveys a sense of the purely We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! human, but in ironic terms . To “get” can mean, The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; in one context, to procreate—as in the begetting The winds that will be howling at all hours, of children (a human as well as an animal characteristic) . In this context, however, “getting” takes And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; on a purely financial or material sense, given its For this, for everything, we are out of tune; combination with “spending”—another term which It moves us not —Great. God! I’d rather be could have sexual or reproductive connotations in A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; Wordsworth’s time, but in this case is resolutely So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, fiscal and material . Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; When Wordsworth writes that these human things “lay waste our powers,” we see that he is once Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn . again drawing an oblique parallel between the positive and natural physical “powers” of the human body (which can get and spend in biological, reproductive terms) and the purely material “The World Is Too Much With Us” and economic behavior of humans in the modern urban environment . In the natural (biological) —Analysis sense, getting and spending is a positive, life-giv- This is one of Wordsworth’s best-known sonnets, ing act; in the modern economic world, getting and spending become negative, life-draining actions . and it is frequently anthologized and recited . These actions lead, in lines five through nine, to In some ways it encapsulates a good deal of a soul-destroying numbness in the face of natural Wordsworth’s youthful perspective on the value beauty . Modern economic humans cannot appre- of human activity—on human business as well ciate the sea, the moon, or the wind—all natural as our perpetual busyness—in comparison to the phenomena and all powerfully personified here . spiritual renewal that an appreciation for nature The sea is a woman who “bares her bosom” while can provide . the winds “howl ”. We are not “moved” by these In this Italian sonnet (rhyming A-B-B-A A-B-B-A powers of nature because we have laid our powers to waste by participating in modern industrial and C-D-C-D-C-D), Wordsworth captures the powerful capitalist enterprises . tension between the raw, uncalculated experience of nature and repetitive calculating social behavior . The Italian sonnet offers the structural possibility The trajectory of the poem is from the quotidian of a “volta” or “turn” after the first eight lines (the present, in which human behavior alienates us octave), and indeed Wordsworth makes use of this chance to generalize: “we are out of tune ”. But it is from the natural world, toward an imagined pagan in the following line, the ninth, that the poet inserts past in which the sensory experience of natural a momentous turn—signaled by a period (after phenomena compels the speaker to envision a “not”), a dash, and a capital “G” in “Great God!” pagan past (paganism has often been associated The double capitalization combined with the allit- with the worship of nature) . The speaker, who is eration of the “G” sounds produces a minor verbal “forlorn” (even though he stands on “this pleasant explosion . The poet seems to want to knock him- lea”), feels that humanity cheats itself by turn- self back into the pagan world of classical Greece ing its back on the sea, the moon, and physical and Rome—or at the very least out of the present experience . moment . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 58 GUIDE his father’s messenger and herald, and used a sea shell to calm or agitate the waves . Both minor gods are marked by their association with the sea and nature; it is significant that Wordsworth does not call on, say, Poseidon himself in this poem . In this sonnet, the intimate connection to nature is valued more than raw power or literary/mythological allusion, which a simpler reference to Poseidon might have gained the poet .

CTED W LE OR SE K • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways By William Wordsworth

Motions and Means, on land and sea at war With old poetic feeling, not for this, Shall ye, by Poets even, be judged amiss! Nor shall your presence, howsoe’er it mar The loveliness of Nature, prove a bar To the Mind’s gaining that prophetic sense Of future change, that point of vision, whence Portrait of William Wordsworth, May be discovered what in soul ye are . probably 1839, reproduction in 1873. In spite of all that beauty may disown Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, In your harsh features, Nature doth embrace The University of Texas at Austin. Her lawful offspring in Man’s art; and Time, Pleased with your triumphs o’er his brother Space, Accepts from your bold hands the proffered crown In this sonnet the young Wordsworth urges a Of hope, and smiles on you with cheer sublime . return to nature as a salvation from this life-draining modernity . He first makes a move back to a pre-Christian Pagan past, which he envisions as closer to nature than his contemporary era, although the phrases “I’d rather be” and “a creed outworn” suggest that this is not his first choice . “Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways” Ironically, he prefaces his wish to be a Pagan with —Analysis the cry “Great God!” which marks the tension he feels between the modern Christian era and the By the time Wordsworth wrote “Steamboats, Pagan past, which he feels might offer him solace . Viaducts, and Railways,” in 1833, he was a liter- What Wordsworth seems to value in Paganism ary lion with an international reputation . Within a (in this case a specifically Greco-Roman religious decade he would be named Poet Laureate of Great tradition) is its ability to animate the natural world Britain, a title he held until his death in 1850 . It with divine presence, or immanence . He does not would be convenient if somewhat facile to claim just want to appreciate nature as he stands looking that this poem signals a shift in Wordsworth’s out at the sea; he wants to see Proteus and Triton mentality from the Romanticism of his younger in the sea; he wishes to encounter an animated days to a more Victorian sensibility, yet it is clear nature charged with power and energy . that by 1833 the poet’s youthful rebelliousness and Proteus was an early sea god, best known for his enthusiasm for nature had modulated into a more ability to change form at will (we get the word staid perspective and more conservative opin- “protean” from this source) . Triton was a later ions . This poem, composed at the advent of the Greek god, son of Poseidon and Amphitrite; he was Victorian period, when the Industrial Revolution Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 59 Hetton Colliery, near Sunderland, which had one of the world’s first private steam railways, opened in 1822. Steam technology lay behind the massive transformation of the landscape, travel, and material production in early nineteenth-century Britain. was in high gear, bespeaks a shift from the young tionship between nature and industry, essentially poet’s yearning for communion with unmediated equating the two . nature to a more tempered faith in civilization’s In this particular poem Wordsworth gives us a progress . Yet Wordsworth was no unquestioning modified Italian sonnet with the following rhyme apologist for “progress,” and we would do well to scheme: A-B-B-A A-C-C-A D-E-F E-D-F . In a verse look for continuity as well as difference between the previous sonnet and this one . form as well-worn yet technically demanding as the sonnet, such an innovation suggests an effort The subtitle of this poem, which reads “COMPOSED on the part of the poet to say something new— OR SUGGESTED DURING A TOUR IN THE SUMMER always a challenge, indeed the challenge, for any OF 1833,” reminds the reader that Wordsworth sonneteer . For by the time Wordsworth wrote often composed poems based on his own visu- them in the nineteenth century, sonnets had been al impressions and emotional experiences of adapted over and over by generations of poets to the ever-changing English landscape . With his express many emotions, thoughts, and experienc- love of the English countryside, particularly the Lake District in his native northwestern England es . Because for many generations sonnets were (Lancashire), with its craggy fells (large hills), primarily written as love poems, it is something of glacial lakes, and stone cottages, “the Lake Poet” a surprise that Wordsworth employs this form to (as he was sometimes called) tended to prefer express a response to the effects of the Industrial green spaces to urban zones . Yet “Steamboats, Revolution . This is not a matter of the poet misap- Viaducts, and Railways” shows a different side propriating a genre so much as it is an adaption of of Wordsworth, one that looks more favorably on a venerable genre to new uses . Between the lines, industry than almost any other of his writings . This as it were, we can discern the echo of bygone poem makes a surprising statement about the rela- sonnets . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 60 GUIDE Yet this sonnet is not about love; it is about the loveliness of Nature” (notice the capitalization), tension between technological innovation, which such inventions derive from nature and are there- the poet calls “Motions and Means,” and “old fore “Her lawful offspring ”. This reconciliation poetic feeling,” a rather hazy notion that evokes is effected because “Time,” which is personified the emotions of old poems (such as the sonnets here, is “Pleased,” “Accepts…the proffered crown/ of Petrarch or of Shakespeare) in order to set up Of hope, and smiles on you [human artifice] with a contrast between the venerable past and the cheer sublime ”. Even things that appear ugly and fast-moving present . Instead of addressing a lover, contrary to nature, claims Wordsworth, can be then, Wordsworth adapts the sonnet form to make seen as offering hope to human beings over time . a statement about technology, development, and It is particularly important to note that this hope human ingenuity . By contrasting the “motions and is obtained only over time . Wordsworth—often a means” that he celebrates in the poem with “old dweller in the past or in the present in his other poetic feeling” in line two, Wordsworth can be said poems—is here making a claim for future gener- to offer a meta-poetic (or self-reflexive) allusion to ations . Not only does Time approve of these new the history of sonnet-writing, for a great deal of inventions (because trains and other new transpor- “old poetic feeling” was expressed by prior writers tation systems help humans triumph over space), of sonnets . In so doing, Wordsworth suggests as Time is also a factor because it is only in the future, well that the subject of this sonnet, the forms of Wordsworth suggests, that these technological human artifice, can sometimes be at odds with a innovations will be understood to be beautiful (or poet’s aesthetic sensibility . This poem attempts to sublime) . And for this transformation to occur, effect a reconciliation between the two . the human mind (with Nature’s inspiration) must We should begin our analysis by noting the title, do the work of making meaning (figuring out which explicitly directs our attention to conspicu- “what in soul ye are”) out of the visible elements ous emblems of the Industrial Revolution . Steam of modernity (steamboats, trains, etc ). . This is technology lay behind the massive transformation not something Nature can do on its own, even of the landscape, travel, and material production in though in Wordsworth’s eyes it clearly approves early nineteenth-century Britain, which was in the (“embrace[s]”) of the innovations, because they throes of a massive transformation in production have their genesis in humankind . and social arrangement . As factories sprang up The last word of the poem, “sublime,” is partic- all over the nation and the landscape was trans- ularly significant, for it reminds us of what has formed, many observers lamented the effects been called “the nineteenth-century cult of the of industrialization and urbanization . New cities sublime ”. The sublime is a term from the philo- grew out of the fields like weeds in places like sophical discourse of aesthetics, the study of art Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham, and the rural and beauty . Eighteenth-century philosophers, such populace trooped to these new cities to become as Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke, inspired by factory laborers . In much the same way that the the essay “On the Sublime,” by the late-Classical automobile transformed the landscape of twenti- thinker Longinus, wrote influential treatises on eth-century America and the lifestyle of its citizens, the sublime . The term, thus, was by Wordsworth’s in the nineteenth century it was the steam engine day a well-established conceptual category of that made possible the massive changes in land- aesthetics . The sublime refers to any spectacle or scape and lifestyle associated with the Industrial experience that is so grand and awe-inspiring that Revolution . it terrifies and, at the same time, exhilarates the Steamboats and trains both relied on the com- beholder . pound steam engine to function; both made travel In terms of its form, this sonnet echoes its theme . more efficient than it had ever been . In the first The first five lines contain strong medial caesuras— line of the poem the speaker addresses (the tech- pauses in the middle of the grammatical rhythm nical term is “apostrophizes”) the abstract nouns of the line noted by commas, semi-colons, other “Motions and Means,” which denote the manmade punctuation, or simply natural pauses in the struc- technological devices and contrivances listed in ture of the poetic sentence—which reinforce the the title of the poem . These devices are “at war” tensions Wordsworth sets up in this poem . In its with “old poetic feeling,” claims the speaker, yet musicality and condensed expression, this poem nonetheless they are useful . is a statement about art, time, and change . But it is Wordsworth thus sets up and then breaks down the notably vague as well, as if the poet were unsure traditional binary of nature versus human artifice of his own response to the experiences upon (“Man’s art”)—in this case, technology—by claim- which he reflects . After all, without the specifics ing that although human inventions may “mar/ The of the poem’s title we would have little awareness Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 61 of what is meant by “Motions and Means,” and of Time smiling “with cheer sublime” is somewhat nowhere is the reader given a fuller understanding forced and unconvincing—not quite the magnif- of what is meant by “old poetic feeling ”. We are left icent distillation of thought, art, and feeling that to glean these meanings for ourselves, and we may Wordsworth achieves in poems about the spiritual well be left with the impression that the final image power of nature .

WORK • • • ED • • • • • • CT • • • E • • • EL • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • S • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Passage to India By Walt Whitman

Singing my days, Singing the great achievements of the present, Singing the strong, light works of engineers, Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,) In the Old World, the east, the Suez canal, The New by its mighty railroad spann’d, The seas inlaid with eloquent, gentle wires, I sound, to commence, the cry, with thee, O soul, The Past! the Past! the Past!

The Past! the dark, unfathom’d retrospect! The teeming gulf! the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present, after all, but a growth out of the past? (As a projectile, form’d, impell’d, passing a certain line, still keeps on, So the present, utterly form’d, impell’d by the past ).

Passage, O soul, to India! Eclaircise the myths Asiatic—the primitive fables .

Not you alone, proud truths of the world! Nor you alone, ye facts of modern science! But myths and fables of eld—Asia’s, Africa’s fables! The far-darting beams of the spirit!—the unloos’d dreams! The deep diving bibles and legends; The daring plots of the poets—the elder religions; —O you temples fairer than lilies, pour’d over by the rising sun! O you fables, spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven! You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish’d with gold! Towers of fables immortal, fashion’d from mortal dreams! You too I welcome, and fully, the same as the rest; You too with joy I sing . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 62 GUIDE 3

Passage to India! Lo, soul! seest thou not God’s purpose from the first? The earth to be spann’d, connected by net-work, The people to become brothers and sisters, The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near, The lands to be welded together .

(A worship new, I sing; You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours! You engineers! you architects, machinists, your! You, not for trade or transportation only, But in God’s name, and for thy sake, O soul ).

Passage to India! Lo, soul, for thee, of tableaus twain, I see, in one, the Suez canal initiated, open’d, I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Eugenie’s leading the van; I mark, from on deck, the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level sand in the distance; I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather’d, The gigantic dredging machines .

In one, again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,) I see over my own continent the Pacific Railroad, surmounting every barrier; I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte, carrying freight and passengers; I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle, I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world; I cross the Laramie plains—I note the rocks in grotesque shapes—the buttes; I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions—the barren, colorless, sage-deserts; I see in glimpses afar, or towering immediately above me, the great mountains—I see the Wind River and the Wahsatch mountains; I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle’s Nest—I pass the Promontory—I ascend the Nevadas; I scan the noble Elk mountain, and wind around its base; I see the Humboldt range—I thread the valley and cross the river, I see the clear waters of Lake Tahoe—I see forests of majestic pines, Or, crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold enchanting mirages of waters and meadows; Marking through these, and after all, in duplicate slender lines, Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel, Tying the Eastern to the Western sea, The road between Europe and Asia .

(Ah Genoese, thy dream! thy dream! Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave, The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream!)

Passage to India! Struggles of many a captain—tales of many a sailor dead! Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 63 Over my mood, stealing and spreading they come, Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach’d sky .

Along all history, down the slopes, As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising, A ceaseless thought, a varied train—Lo, soul! to thee, thy sight, they rise, The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions: Again Vasco de Gama sails forth; Again the knowledge gain’d, the mariner’s compass, Lands found, and nations born—thou born, America, (a hemisphere unborn,) For purpose vast, man’s long probation fill’d, Thou, rondure of the world, at last accomplish’d .

O, vast Rondure, swimming in space! Cover’d all over with visible power and beauty! Alternate light and day, and the teeming, spiritual darkness; Unspeakable, high processions of sun and moon, and countless stars, above; Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees; With inscrutable purpose—some hidden, prophetic intention; Now, first, it seems, my thought begins to span thee .

Down from the gardens of Asia, descending, radiating, Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them, Wandering, yearning, curious—with restless explorations, With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish—with never-happy hearts, With that sad, incessant refrain, Wherefore, unsatisfied Soul? and Whither, O mocking Life?

Ah, who shall soothe these feverish children? Who justify these restless explorations? Who speak the secret of impassive Earth? Who bind it to us? What is this separate Nature, so unnatural? What is this Earth, to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours; Cold earth, the place of graves ).

Yet, soul, be sure the first intent remains—and shall be carried out; (Perhaps even now the time has arrived ).

After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,) After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work, After the noble inventors—after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist, Finally shall come the Poet, worthy that name; The true Son of God shall come, singing his songs .

Then, not your deeds only, O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified, All these hearts, as of fretted children, shall be sooth’d, All affection shall be fully responded to—the secret shall be told; All these separations and gaps shall be taken up, and hook’d and link’d together; The whole Earth—this cold, impassive, voiceless Earth, shall be completely justified; Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish’d and compacted by the Son of God, the poet, (He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains, He shall double the Cape of Good Hope to some purpose;) Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more, The true Son of God shall absolutely fuse them . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 64 GUIDE 7

Year at whose open’d, wide-flung door I sing! Year of the purpose accomplish’d! Year of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans! (No mere Doge of Venice now, wedding the Adriatic;) I see, O year, in you, the vast terraqueous globe, given, and giving all, Europe to Asia, Africa join’d, and they to the New World; The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival garland, As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand .

Passage to India! Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of man, The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up again .

Lo, soul, the retrospect, brought forward; The old, most populous, wealthiest of Earth’s lands, The streams of the Indus and the Ganges, and their many affluents; (I, my shores of America walking to-day, behold, resuming all,) The tale of Alexander, on his warlike marches, suddenly dying, On one side China, and on the other side Persia and Arabia, To the south the great seas, and the Bay of Bengal; The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes, Old occult Brahma, interminably far back—the tender and junior Buddha, Central and southern empires, and all their belongings, possessors, The wars of Tamerlane, the reign of Aurungzebe, The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, Venetians, Byzantium, the Arabs, Portuguese, The first travelers, famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta the Moor, Doubts to be solv’d, the map incognita, blanks to be fill’d, The foot of man unstay’d, the hands never at rest, Thyself, O soul, that will not brook a challenge .

The medieval navigators rise before me, The world of 1492, with its awaken’d enterprise; Something swelling in humanity now like the sap of the earth in spring, The sunset splendor of chivalry declining .

And who art thou, sad shade? Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary, With majestic limbs, and pious, beaming eyes, Spreading around, with every look of thine, a golden world, Enhuing it with gorgeous hues .

As the chief histrion, Down to the footlights walks, in some great scena, Dominating the rest, I see the Admiral himself, (History’s type of courage, action, faith;) Behold him sail from Palos, leading his little fleet; His voyage behold—his return—his great fame, His misfortunes, calumniators—behold him a prisoner, chain’d, Behold his dejection, poverty, death . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 65 (Curious, in time, I stand, noting the efforts of heroes; Is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty, death? Lies the seed unreck’d for centuries in the ground? Lo! to God’s due occasion, Uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms, And fills the earth with use and beauty ).

Passage indeed, O soul, to primal thought! Not lands and seas alone—thy own clear freshness, The young maturity of brood and bloom; To realms of budding bibles .

O soul, repressless, I with thee, and thou with me, Thy circumnavigation of the world begin; Of man, the voyage of his mind’s return, To reason’s early paradise, Back, back to wisdom’s birth, to innocent intuitions, Again with fair Creation .

O we can wait no longer! We too take ship, O soul! Joyous, we too launch out on trackless seas! Fearless, for unknown shores, on waves of extasy to sail, Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,) Caroling free—singing our song of God, Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration .

With laugh, and many a kiss, (Let others deprecate—let others weep for sin, remorse, humiliation;) O soul, thou pleasest me—I thee .

Ah, more than any priest, O soul, we too believe in God; But with the mystery of God we dare not dally .

O soul, thou pleasest me—I thee; Sailing these seas, or on the hills, or waking in the night, Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time, and Space, and Death, like waters flowing, Bear me, indeed, as through the regions infinite, Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear—lave me all over; Bathe me, O God, in thee—mounting to thee, I and my soul to range in range of thee .

O Thou transcendant! Nameless—the fibre and the breath! Light of the light—shedding forth universes—thou centre of them! Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving! Thou moral, spiritual fountain! affection’s source! thou reservoir! (O pensive soul of me! O thirst unsatisfied! waitest not there? Waitest not haply for us, somewhere there, the Comrade perfect?) Thou pulse! thou motive of the stars, suns, systems, That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space! Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 66 GUIDE How should I think—how breathe a single breath—how speak—if, out of myself, I could not launch, to those, superior universes?

Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, But that I, turning, call to thee, O soul, thou actual Me, And lo! thou gently masterest the orbs, Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, And fillest, swellest full, the vastnesses of Space .

Greater than stars or suns, Bounding, O soul, thou journeyest forth; —What love, than thine and ours could wider amplify? What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours, O soul? What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength? What cheerful willingness, for others’ sake, to give up all? For others’ sake to suffer all?

Reckoning ahead, O soul, when thou, the time achiev’d, (The seas all cross’d, weather’d the capes, the voyage done,) Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain’d, As, fill’d with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found, The Younger melts in fondness in his arms .

Passage to more than India! Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights? O Soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like these? Disportest thou on waters such as these? Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas? Then have thy bent unleash’d .

Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas! Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems! You, strew’d with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living, never reach’d you .

Passage to more than India! O secret of the earth and sky! Of you, O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers! Of you, O woods and fields! Of you, strong mountains of my land! Of you, O prairies! Of you, gray rocks! O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows! O day and night, passage to you!

O sun and moon, and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter! Passage to you!

Passage—immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins! Away, O soul! hoist instantly the anchor! Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail! Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes? Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough? Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 67 Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only! Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me; For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all .

O my brave soul! O farther, farther sail! O daring joy, but safe! Are they not all the seas of God? O farther, farther, farther sail!

“Passage to India”—Analysis was a Portuguese mariner who sailed around the tip of Africa to India and back in 1497), and he sees Walt Whitman was an American poet in an era the technological developments of his own day when American literature was seen by Europeans as the fruition of their earlier attempts to link the and by many educated Americans as embry- continents . Whitman develops the notion of India onic . Whitman’s life coincided with numerous as a realm of exoticism in this free verse ode to momentous changes in American history, includ- progress . ing the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the eman- The opening lines of “Passage to India” begin with cipation of the slaves, Lincoln’s assassination, a characteristically grand self-referential gesture Reconstruction, and the dramatic late-century by the poet, who comes out singing, using the expansion of railways, steam-powered shipping, and industry . Whitman’s life also overlapped with distinctly American religious and social movements, from Transcendentalism and abolitionism to Mormonism and the women’s movement . Many of these developments found their way into his poetry . “Passage to India” seems to surf on the surging tide of late-nineteenth-century technological and national expansion . Part of Whitman’s collection Leaves of Grass, this is a sweeping paean (poem of praise) to all that is distant and exotic, to historical technological progress and commercial expansion—indeed, to an early stage of globalization (a term often associated with our own age) . Over the course of many lines and many stanzas, the speaker develops the metaphor of India as representative of all that is distant and difficult to attain . The term “India” itself means far more than first appears: not only does it refer to the Indian subcontinent (or South Asia), a region of the globe newly accessible to the West after the completion of the Suez Canal, but it also reminds us of the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the Americas by the early modern navigators and explorers, such as Christopher Columbus, whom Whitman extols as the “Genoese ”. (Columbus was Photograph of Walt Whitman, 1887. from the Italian city of Genoa ). Columbus went Whitman’s life coincided with numerous to his grave believing he had discovered a west- momentous changes in American ern route to the Indies and that the islands of the history, and many of these developments Caribbean were off the coast of Asia . Columbus and found their way into his poetry. Vasco da Gama are Whitman’s heroes (da Gama Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 68 GUIDE Celebration of the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, Promontory Summit, Utah. In Whitman’s view, “modern wonders,” such as the Transcontinental Railroad, are not simply monuments but are what one might think of as connective technologies, or things which make connections between nations and individuals faster and easier. present participle of the verb “to sing” in order to iambic tetrameter and iambic pentameter . Instead draw the reader’s attention to the contrast between of employing rhyme, the repetition of phonemes “our modern wonders” and all that belongs to at the end of lines of verse, Whitman chooses to “antique” times . repeat specific words, placing great emphasis on “singing” and “the Past ”. His free verse suits his Singing my days majestic theme, the unification of the globe by Singing the great achievements of the means of technological transformation . Framing present, his ode to historical progress between the poles Singing the strong, light works of of an Old World that is being transformed and engineers an explosive New World, Whitman celebrates the Our modern wonders (the antique development of new technologies to bring the ponderous Seven outvied,) peoples of the earth together . The Seven Wonders In the Old World, the east, the Suez canal of the ancient world, he claims, have been “out- The New by its mighty railroad spann’d . vied” (outshone) by “the strong, light works of The seas inlaid with eloquent, gentle engineers,” with their railroads, canals, trains, and wires, steamships connecting the continents and nations I sound, to commence, the cry, with thee, and effectively shrinking the experiential size of the O soul, earth . Whitman mentions three of these wonders The Past! the Past! the Past! specifically: the Suez Canal, completed in 1869, These lines follow no conventional verse form which connected the Mediterranean with the Red or rigid pattern . The lines and stanzas are of Sea, and therefore Europe with Asia; the American irregular length; the meter tends to be between Transcontinental Railroad, also completed in 1869; Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 69 and the laying of trans-Atlantic telegraph cables, accelerating travel . Later in the poem, Whitman accomplished several times in the 1850s and 60s . writes: “All these separations and gaps shall be taken up, and hook’d and link’d together ”. This is These “modern wonders,” for Whitman, exceed a vision of a unified, or at least a deeply intercon- the great achievements of past civilizations . These nected, global social order . three wonders, importantly, are not simply monuments (as were many of the Seven Wonders) but Historically speaking, the unification that Whitman what one might think of as connective technolo- describes as “The lands to be welded together” was gies, or things which make connections between fast being brought to fruition in his own lifetime— nations and individuals faster and easier . For in the form of Imperialism . It was a unification Whitman, these pathways become symbolic of brought about not merely by technical and techno- the pathways he is attempting to forge poetically logical innovation, but also by violence, coercion, between himself and his soul, or himself and the expropriation, and multiple forms of exploitation . Divine . Should we blame the poet for his cockeyed optimism? Could Whitman have known that America’s Whitman’s outlook on the course of history and the westward expansion was wrought by the massive potential for human connection to the self or to the dispossession of Native Americans and Hispanics? divine is a distinctly sunny one . The dark side of the Perhaps not . But Whitman’s optimism runs starkly internationalism and expansion that Whitman cele- counter to the realities of American slavery and the brates was imperialism, which is never mentioned Civil War, and anyone reading the poem today can by name . Throughout the poem the speaker’s tone be forgiven for detecting a discordant undertone in is notably optimistic . Once upon a time, he sug- the verses’ optimism . gests, it might have taken captains years to reach India—now, with modern technology, the passage Throughout the poem Whitman omits any mention is much quicker . This increased speed, Whitman of the violent expropriation of Africans, Asians, implies, is part of the divine plan and part of the Polynesians, Native Americans, and others in the natural evolution of humanity . Consider the third nineteenth-century imperialist scramble that was section, which may remind us of Wordsworth’s both cause and effect of the massive expansion he “Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways”: celebrates . To those who would accuse Whitman of ignorance in such a blindly positive celebration Passage to India! of imperialism and colonialism, the takeover of Lo, soul! seest thou not God’s purpose less-developed nations and regions by Europeans from the first? and their descendants, we should note that he The earth to be spann’d, connected by envisions a world in which the intermarriage of net-work, people of different races will become the norm . The people to become brothers and Yet nonetheless Whitman’s stridently celebratory sisters, song of progress as a unifying global force seems The races, neighbors, to marry and be excessively optimistic with a theologically inflect- given in marriage, ed rhetoric of total global unification, as in the The oceans to be cross’d, the distant following lines: brought near, The lands to be welded together . The whole Earth—this cold, impassive, voiceless Earth, shall be completely These lines articulate a wildly optimistic vision of justified; global unity . Whitman explicitly claims that “God’s Trinitas divine shall be gloriously purpose from the first” has been to unite human- accomplish’d and compacted by the ity across vast distances so that all will eventually True Son of God, the poet, be “connected by network” and “to marry and (He shall indeed pass the straits and be given in marriage ”. Like Wordsworth’s claim conquer the mountains, that rail and steam can conquer space, this poem He shall double the Cape of Good Hope to similarly praises innovation for collapsing space some purpose;) and bridging nations and cultures . This exuberant Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and vision of the future sounds prophetic enough: one diffused no more, might reasonably claim that the poet here prophe- The true Son of God shall absolutely fuse sies such future developments as the World Wide them . Web and the United Nations (with some hyperbo- le), and that the poet’s predictions have in some With these theological claims Whitman insists that sense come true . The poem is laden with referenc- the holy trinity of Christianity (the three-in-one of es to technological achievements that were, in the the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) “shall be nineteenth century, already shrinking the globe by gloriously accomplish’d” such that “Nature and Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 70 GUIDE Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more ”. from the poet who wrote “Song of Myself”) . For He concludes these incantatory verses with the Whitman, technology, nature, innovation, other remarkable statement, “The True Son of God shall cultures, the American landscape, and the Suez absolutely fuse them ”. Fuse what? His answer: Canal are but elements contained within his own “Nature and Man .” The traditional Western binaries being . The literal passages to India can be read as of man-versus-nature and nature-versus-culture allegories for passages Whitman is eager to forge collapse as the human and the non-human will between his poetic “I ”. Read in this metaphoric be united in a new world order of universal sib- light, Whitman celebrates any technological inno- linghood—not just between nations but between vation which would speed this connection . India “Nature and Man ”. The sentiment of these lines itself becomes a complex symbol rather than a closely resembles what Wordsworth wrote about real geographical cultural-political entity . For many Time smiling on human artifice as nature’s “off- nineteenth-century Westerners, Whitman among spring” in “Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways ”. them, India represented the East, the Antique, the Whitman offers his version of this statement in Orient . The rich and ancient Hindu traditions, as sweeping repetitious verses that seem designed to well as associations with the Buddha, made India wash away any possibility of dissent—or at least to insist on the point for so long that the reader gives a prime symbol of all that was spiritually deep and up and moves on . complex . Whitman is clearly drawing on these associations as well as others when he aligns mak- This work is more a map of what could have been ing “passages” to India with forging connections than a story of what actually came about histori- to his own soul . cally . Whitman is a strident apologist for American expansionism and a wild optimist about the pos- In addition to his effusiveness and refusal to sibility of historical progress, which he sees as employ traditional verse forms, several features uniting people and places around the globe . Unlike of Whitman’s style stand out . First, his diction his contemporary Herman Melville, whose Moby- tends to be inventive, and he frequently creates Dick can be read as a prophetic warning about compounds and uses slightly Anglicized French the course of the American ship of state, Whitman words such as “eclaircise” (meaning “clarify” or viewed the technologically-enabled expansion of “shed light on”) and rondure (for “roundness”) . the Euro-American state as an almost unmitigated The poet’s inventiveness in this respect cannot be force for good . missed . Whitman is shaping not only syntax, line Yet if we choose to read “Passage to India” less length, and stanza to his purposes, but also words contextually, then our response might be quite and phrases . It is as if conventional, everyday different, for Whitman’s bold poetic voice and language and traditional poetic forms were sim- ebullient free verse are nothing short of revolution- ply insufficient to bear the weight of his message ary . In particular, we can focus on what Whitman about progress . One cannot help feeling his energy has to say about the self (as one might expect and enthusiasm in “Passage to India ”.

A Wind-storm in the Forests By John Muir

The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are measured and bestowed with love on the forests to develop their strength and beauty . However restricted the scope of other forest influences, that of the winds is universal . The snow bends and trims the upper forests every winter, the lightning strikes a single tree here and there, while avalanches mow down thousands at a swoop as a gardener trims out a bed of flowers . But the winds go to every tree, fingering every leaf and branch and furrowed bole; not one is forgotten; the Mountain Pine towering with outstretched arms on the rugged buttresses of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring tenant of the dells; they seek and find Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 71 them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean; the winds blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable beauty and harmony as the sure result .

After one has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses before a mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a crash that shakes the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the lowest thickset trees, could ever have found a period sufficiently stormless to establish themselves; or, once established, that they should not, sooner or later, have been blown down . But when the storm is over, and we behold the same forests tranquil again, towering fresh and unscathed in erect majesty, and consider what centuries of storms have fallen upon them since they were first planted,—hail, to break the tender seedlings; lightning, to scorch and shatter; snow, winds, and avalanches, to crush and overwhelm,—while the manifest result of all this wild storm-culture is the glorious perfection we behold; then faith in Nature’s forestry is established, and we cease to deplore the violence of her most destructive gales, or of any other storm-implement whatsoever .

There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never blown down, so long as they continue in sound health . These are the Juniper and the Dwarf Pine of the summit peaks . Their stiff, crooked roots grip the storm-beaten ledges like eagles’ claws, while their lithe, cord-like branches bend round compliantly, offering but slight holds for winds, however violent . The other alpine conifers—the Needle Pine, Mountain Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruce—are never thinned out by this agent to any destructive extent, on account of their admirable toughness and the closeness of their growth . In general the same is true of the giants of the lower zones . The kingly Sugar Pine, towering aloft to a height of more than 200 feet, offers a fine mark to storm-winds; but it is not densely foliaged, and its long, horizontal arms swing round compliantly in the blast, like tresses of green, fluent algæ in a brook; while the Silver Firs in most places keep their ranks well together in united strength . The Yellow or Silver Pine is more frequently overturned than any other tree on the Sierra, because its leaves and branches form a larger mass in proportion to its height, while in many places it is planted sparsely, leaving open lanes through which storms may enter with full force . Furthermore, because it is dis- tributed along the lower portion of the range, which was the first to be left bare on the breaking up of the ice-sheet at the close of the glacial winter, the soil it is growing upon has been longer exposed to post-glacial weathering, and consequently is in a more crumbling, decayed condition than the fresher soils farther up the range, and therefore offers a less secure anchorage for the roots .

While exploring the forest zones of Mount Shasta, I discovered the path of a hurricane strewn with thousands of pines of this species . Great and small had been uprooted or wrenched off by sheer force, making a clean gap, like that made by a snow avalanche . But hurricanes capable of doing this class of work are rare in the Sierra, and when we have explored the forests from one extremity of the range to the other, we are compelled to believe that they are the most beautiful on the face of the earth, however we may regard the agents that have made them so .

There is always something deeply exciting, not only in the sounds of winds in the woods, which exert more or less influence over every mind, but in their varied waterlike flow as manifested by the movements of the trees, especially those of the conifers . By no other trees are they rendered so extensively and impressively visible, not even by the lordly tropic palms or tree-ferns responsive to the gentlest breeze . The waving of a forest of the giant Sequoias is indescribably impressive and sublime, but the pines seem to me the best interpreters of winds . They are mighty waving goldenrods, ever in tune, singing and writing wind-music all their long century lives . Little, however, of this noble tree-waving and tree-music will you see or hear in the strictly alpine portion of the forests . The burly Juniper, whose girth sometimes more than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it grows . The slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine stream out in wavering ripples, but the tallest and slenderest are far too unyielding to wave even in the heaviest gales . They only shake in quick, short vibrations . The Hemlock Spruce, however, and the Mountain Pine, and some of the tallest thickets of Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 72 GUIDE the Two-leaved species bow in storms with considerable scope and gracefulness . But it is only in the lower and middle zones that the meeting of winds and woods is to be seen in all its grandeur .

One of the most beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever enjoyed in the Sierra occurred in December, 1874, when I happened to be exploring one of the tributary valleys of the Yuba River . The sky and the ground and the trees had been thoroughly rain-washed and were dry again . The day was intensely pure, one of those incomparable bits of California winter, warm and balmy and full of white sparkling sunshine, redolent of all the purest influences of the spring, and at the same time enlivened with one of the most bracing wind-storms conceivable . Instead of camping out, as I usually do, I then chanced to be stopping at the house of a friend . But when the storm began to sound, I lost no time in pushing out into the woods to enjoy it . For on such occasions Nature has always something rare to show us, and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof .

It was still early morning when I found myself fairly adrift . Delicious sunshine came pouring over the hills, lighting the tops of the pines, and setting free a steam of summery fragrance that contrasted strangely with the wild tones of the storm . The air was mottled with pine-tassels and bright green plumes, that went flashing past in the sunlight like birds pursued . But there was not the slightest dustiness, nothing less pure than leaves, and ripe pollen, and flecks of withered bracken and moss . I heard trees falling for hours at the rate of one every two or three minutes; some uprooted, partly on account of the loose, water-soaked condition of the ground; others broken straight across, where some weakness caused by fire had determined the spot . The gestures of the various trees made a delightful study . Young Sugar Pines, light and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the ground; while the grand old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been tried in a hundred storms, waved solemnly above them, their long, arching branches streaming fluently on the gale, and every needle thrilling and ringing and shedding off keen lances of light like a diamond . The Douglas Spruces, with long sprays drawn out in level tresses, and needles massed in a gray, shimmering glow, presented a most striking appearance as they stood in bold relief along the hilltops . The madronños in the dells, with their red bark and large glossy leaves tilted every way, reflected the sunshine in throbbing spangles like those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a glacier lake . But the Silver Pines were now the most impressively beautiful of all . Colossal spires 200 feet in height waved like supple goldenrods chanting and bowing low as if in worship, while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire . The force of the gale was such that the most steadfast monarch of them all rocked down to its roots with a motion plainly perceptible when one leaned against it . Nature was holding high festival, and every fiber of the most rigid giants thrilled with glad excitement .

I drifted on through the midst of this passionate music and motion, across many a glen, from ridge to ridge; often halting in the lee of a rock for shelter, or to gaze and listen . Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones of individual trees,—Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak,—and even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet . Each was expressing itself in its own way,—singing its own song, and making its own peculiar gestures,—manifesting a richness of variety to be found in no other forest I have yet seen . The coniferous woods of Canada, and the Carolinas, and Florida, are made up of trees that resemble one another about as nearly as blades of grass, and grow close together in much the same way . Coniferous trees, in general, seldom possess individual character, such as is manifest among Oaks and Elms . But the California forests are made up of a greater number of distinct species than any other in the world . And in them we find, not only a marked differentiation into special groups, but also a marked individuality in almost every tree, giving rise to storm effects indescribably glorious .

Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through copses of hazel and ceanothus, I gained the summit of the highest ridge in the neighborhood; and then it occurred to me that it would be a fine thing to climb one of the trees to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear close to the Æolian music of its topmost needles . But under the circumstances the choice of a tree was a serious matter . One whose Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 73 instep was not very strong seemed in danger of being blown down, or of being struck by others in case they should fall; another was branchless to a considerable height above the ground, and at the same time too large to be grasped with arms and legs in climbing; while others were not favorably situated for clear views . After cautiously casting about, I made choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that were growing close together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed likely to fall unless all the rest fell with it . Though comparatively young, they were about 100 feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy . Being accustomed to climb trees in making botanical studies, I experienced no difficulty in reaching the top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so noble an exhilaration of motion . The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves, while I clung with muscles firm braced, like a bobo-link on a reed .

In its widest sweeps my tree-top described an arc of from twenty to thirty degrees, but I felt sure of its elastic temper, having seen others of the same species still more severely tried—bent almost to the ground indeed, in heavy snows—without breaking a fiber . I was therefore safe, and free to take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the excited forest from my superb outlook . The view from here must be extremely beautiful in any weather . Now my eye roved over the piny hills and dales as over fields of waving grain, and felt the light running in ripples and broad swelling undulations across the valleys from ridge to ridge, as the shining foliage was stirred by corresponding waves of air . Oftentimes these waves of reflected light would break up suddenly into a kind of beaten foam, and again, after chasing one another in regular order, they would seem to bend forward in concentric curves, and disappear on some hillside, like sea-waves on a shelving shore . The quantity of light reflected from the bent needles was so great as to make whole groves appear as if covered with snow, while the black shadows beneath the trees greatly enhanced the effect of the silvery splendor .

Excepting only the shadows there was nothing somber in all this wild sea of pines . On the contrary, notwithstanding this was the winter season, the colors were remarkably beautiful . The shafts of the pine and libocedrus were brown and purple, and most of the foliage was well tinged with yellow; the laurel groves, with the pale undersides of their leaves turned upward, made masses of gray; and then there was many a dash of chocolate color from clumps of manzanita, and jet of vivid crimson from the bark of the madroños, while the ground on the hillsides, appearing here and there through openings between the groves, displayed masses of pale purple and brown .

The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with this wild exuberance of light and motion . The profound bass of the naked branches and boles booming like waterfalls; the quick, tense vibrations of the pine-needles, now rising to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a silky murmur; the rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen metallic click of leaf on leaf—all this was heard in easy analysis when the attention was calmly bent .

The varied gestures of the multitude were seen to fine advantage, so that one could recognize the different species at a distance of several miles by this means alone, as well as by their forms and colors, and the way they reflected the light . All seemed strong and comfortable, as if really enjoying the storm, while responding to its most enthusiastic greetings . We hear much nowadays concerning the universal struggle for existence, but no struggle in the common meaning of the word was manifest here; no recognition of danger by any tree; no deprecation; but rather an invincible gladness as remote from exultation as from fear .

I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the music by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was streaming past . The fragrance of the woods was less marked than that produced during warm rain, when so many balsamic buds and leaves are steeped like tea; but, from the chafing of resiny branches against each other, and the incessant attrition of myriads of needles, the gale was spiced to a very tonic degree . And besides the fragrance from these local Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 74 GUIDE sources there were traces of scents brought from afar . For this wind came first from the sea, rubbing against its fresh, briny waves, then distilled through the redwoods, threading rich ferny gulches, and spreading itself in broad undulating currents over many a flower-enameled ridge of the coast mountains, then across the golden plains, up the purple foot-hills, and into these piny woods with the varied incense gathered by the way .

Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents alone . Mariners detect the flowery perfume of land-winds far at sea, and sea-winds carry the fragrance of dulse and tangle far inland, where it is quickly recognized, though mingled with the scents of a thousand land-flowers . As an illustration of this, I may tell here that I breathed sea-air on the Firth of Forth, in Scotland, while a boy; then was taken to Wisconsin, where I remained nineteen years; then, without in all this time having breathed one breath of the sea, I walked quietly, alone, from the middle of the Mississippi Valley to the Gulf of Mexico, on a botanical excursion, and while in Florida, far from the coast, my attention wholly bent on the splendid tropical vegetation about me, I suddenly recognized a sea-breeze, as it came sifting through the palmettos and blooming vine-tangles, which at once awakened and set free a thousand dormant associations, and made me a boy again in Scotland, as if all the intervening years had been annihilated .

Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear them in mind; but few care to look at the winds, though far more beautiful and sublime, and though they become at times about as visible as flowing water . When the north winds in winter are making upward sweeps over the curving summits of the High Sierra, the fact is sometimes published with flying snow-banners a mile long . Those portions of the winds thus embodied can scarce be wholly invisible, even to the darkest imagination . And when we look around over an agitated forest, we may see something of the wind that stirs it, by its effects upon the trees . Yonder it descends in a rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the bending pines from hill to hill . Nearer, we see detached plumes and leaves, now speeding by on level currents, now whirling in eddies, or, escaping over the edges of the whirls, soaring aloft on grand, upswelling domes of air, or tossing on flame-like crests . Smooth, deep currents, cascades, falls, and swirling eddies, sing around every tree and leaf, and over all the varied topography of the region with telling changes of form, like mountain rivers conforming to the features of their channels .

After tracing the Sierra streams from their fountains to the plains, marking where they bloom white in falls, glide in crystal plumes, surge gray and foam-filled in boulder-choked gorges, and slip through the woods in long, tranquil reaches—after thus learning their language and forms in detail, we may at length hear them chanting all together in one grand anthem, and comprehend them all in clear inner vision, covering the range like lace . But even this spectacle is far less sublime and not a whit more substantial than what we may behold of these storm-streams of air in the mountain woods .

We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense . They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings—many of them not so much .

When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through the calming woods . The storm-tones died away, and, turning toward the east, I beheld the countless hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil, towering above one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout audience . The setting sun filled them with amber light, and seemed to say, while they listened, “My peace I give unto you ”.

As I gazed on the impressive scene, all the so called ruin of the storm was forgotten, and never before did these noble woods appear so fresh, so joyous, so immortal . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 75 John Muir, c. 1912. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

“A Wind-storm in the Forests”—Analysis at this selection, for example, reveals his knowledge of the coniferous trees of the Sierra Nevadas: Originally the tenth chapter of his book The he mentions “Needle Pine, Mountain Pine, Two- Mountains of California, published in 1894, “A leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruce,” as well as “the Wind-storm in the Forests” describes Muir’s experi- kingly Sugar Pine, towering aloft to a height of ences with wild weather in the woods of California’s more than 200 feet ”. Sierra Nevada Mountains . This is the only text in In this descriptive prose piece Muir gives the read- this section that is not in verse; it is a prose narra- er a taste of the sublime in a very different guise tive recounting an episode in the writer’s life . Yet than Wordsworth does in “Steamboats, Viaducts, it is poetic prose, highly descriptive and laden with and Railways ”. After a brief general discussion of adjective phrases and vivid descriptions . Muir’s the creative force of “the mountain winds,” which writing at its best is characterized by meticulously is the central topic of the narrative, in which he detailed observations of natural phenomena grow- illustrates the power of wind to shape mountain ing out of an exhilarated first-person narrative . An landscapes, Muir then recounts an episode from enthusiastic field naturalist, Muir not only evinces his own life in which he personally experienced great familiarity with the flora and fauna of the the wind’s power firsthand . He begins the narrative regions he describes, but he also demonstrates an proper by informing the reader, “One of the most ecological mindset . Ecology is the study of living beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever enjoyed in things and their interactions with each other and the Sierra occurred in December, 1874, when I hap- their physical environment; it is a systemic and pened to be exploring one of the tributary valleys holistic science . Muir’s ecological mindset can be of the Yuba River ”. He later ascends a tree in order seen in the connections he makes between living to witness the power of the wind . Why does he things and material forces—between the wind climb a tree at the start of a squall? The answer, as and the forest, water in its various states and all Muir puts it, is simple: to “get my ear close to the living things—and in the distinctions he makes Æolian music of its topmost needles ”. He wishes to between species and phenomena . A quick glance hear the divine sound of the wind rushing through Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 76 GUIDE Pines, light and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the ground; while the grand old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been tried in a hundred storms, waved solemnly above them, their long, arching branches streaming fluently on the gale, and every needle thrilling and ringing and shedding off keen lances of light like a diamond . The Douglas Spruces, with long sprays drawn out in level tresses, and needles massed in a gray, shimmering glow, presented a most striking appearance as they stood in bold relief along the hilltops . The madronños in the dells, with their red bark and large glossy leaves tilted every way, reflected the sunshine in throbbing spangles like those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a glacier lake . But the Silver Pines were now the most impressively beautiful of all . Colossal spires 200 feet in height waved like supple goldenrods chanting and bowing low as if in worship, while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire . The force of the gale was such that the most steadfast monarch of them all rocked down to its roots with John Muir hiking in his beloved Sierra a motion plainly perceptible when one Nevada Mountains. Muir’s writing reveals his leaned against it . Nature was holding high unflagging commitment to getting as close to festival, and every fiber of the most rigid the raw forces of nature as he possibly can. giants thrilled with glad excitement . This passage can be described as anthropomorphic yet not anthropocentric . Anthropomorphism the pine needles . For Muir, this is a sound that animates this passage and can be found in near- evokes classical poetry . (The Aeolian Harp is an ly every sentence . As we know, in reality nature important part of Homer’s Odyssey .) does not actually hold “high festival,” and calling Ultimately, Muir wishes to get closer to the Creator trees “giants” that “thrilled with excitement” is of the forests and mountains he loves . What the a near-personification (like J R. R. . Tolkien’s Ents reader finds arresting about this account of his in The Lord of the Rings) . Nevertheless, Muir’s travels is his unflagging commitment to getting anthropomorphic description of the landscape as close to the raw forces of nature as he possibly seems entirely appropriate here; indeed, as a can . His description of what follows details the rhetorical strategy it works exceptionally well . For effects of nature’s raw energy: Muir captures the excitement and spiritual exulta- The air was mottled with pine-tassels and tion that he felt when experiencing the powerful bright green plumes, that went flashing energy of a storm in the Sierras . He also keeps his past in the sunlight like birds pursued . But attention directed at natural phenomena and proj- there was not the slightest dustiness, noth- ects his own emotions onto the forested landscape . ing less pure than leaves, and ripe pollen, Can the trees genuinely be said to be “thrilled and flecks of withered bracken and moss . with glad excitement”? No . But the speaker is: he I heard trees falling for hours at the rate describes himself, his own emotional response to of one every two or three minutes; some the situation . But the speaker is far less interested uprooted, partly on account of the loose, in himself—or in anything else human—than he is water-soaked condition of the ground; oth- in the nature that surrounds him . He risks his own ers broken straight across, where some health and safety to witness the “high festival” that weakness caused by fire had determined he feels “Nature” holds during the wind storm . the spot . The gestures of the various trees Part of Muir’s appeal as a writer lies in the way his made a delightful study . Young Sugar writing style captures the energy of natural forc- Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 77 es—a meteorological disturbance and the trees’ stark beauty of the California landscape, drawing response to it . This text, then, seems an excellent the viewer outside the realm of the human-created . example of this year’s curricular theme, for the Thus, anthropomorphism paradoxically serves to innovative theme that Muir offers is how the ener- resist anthropocentrism, and the reader finds her- gy of natural forces can invigorate and renew our self or himself pulled into vivid verbal landscapes own lives . In a storm in the Sierras, Muir hears painted with sweeping brushstrokes as well as “the passionate music” of nature and learns how minute attention to detail, as in the following each tree “express[es] itself in its own way ”. For passage: John Muir, the citizens of the vegetable kingdom have individuality, character, and something very In its widest sweeps my tree-top described special to say—if only we will listen, as he does in an arc of from twenty to thirty degrees, passages such as the following . but I felt sure of its elastic temper, having seen others of the same species still more I drifted on through the midst of this pas- severely tried—bent almost to the ground sionate music and motion, across many indeed, in heavy snows—without breaking a glen, from ridge to ridge; often halting a fiber . I was therefore safe, and free to in the lee of a rock for shelter, or to gaze take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the and listen . Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest pitch, I could excited forest from my superb outlook . The distinctly hear the varying tones of indi- view from here must be extremely beautiful vidual trees,—Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, in any weather . Now my eye roved over the and leafless Oak,—and even the infinitely piny hills and dales as over fields of waving gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my grain, and felt the light running in ripples feet . Each was expressing itself in its own and broad swelling undulations across the way,—singing its own song, and making valleys from ridge to ridge, as the shining its own peculiar gestures,—manifesting a foliage was stirred by corresponding waves richness of variety to be found in no other of air . Oftentimes these waves of reflected forest I have yet seen . The coniferous light would break up suddenly into a kind of woods of Canada, and the Carolinas, and beaten foam, and again, after chasing one Florida, are made up of trees that resemble another in regular order, they would seem one another about as nearly as blades of to bend forward in concentric curves, and grass, and grow close together in much disappear on some hillside, like sea-waves the same way . Coniferous trees, in gener- on a shelving shore . The quantity of light al, seldom possess individual character, reflected from the bent needles was so such as is manifest among Oaks and Elms . great as to make whole groves appear as But the California forests are made up of a if covered with snow, while the black shad- greater number of distinct species than any ows beneath the trees greatly enhanced the other in the world . And in them we find, not effect of the silvery splendor . only a marked differentiation into special Here again the trajectory of Muir’s writing pulls groups, but also a marked individuality the reader outside of human preoccupations and in almost every tree, giving rise to storm invites her (or him) to witness a spectacle of tran- effects indescribably glorious . scendent beauty—the spectacle itself, of course, Here again we see Muir taking pains to distinguish depicted in Muir’s prose . Muir’s attention to details between tree species, between coniferous trees of light, movement, color, and other aesthetic (softwoods) and deciduous trees (hardwoods), effects begins, after a time, to seem somewhat and we witness his deep understanding of the obsessive, and we might find ourselves suspecting vegetable life and ecosystems of North America, that there is more to his description than meets the from “Canada, and the Carolinas, and Florida” eye . And indeed there is . For at the end of the storm to California . Muir eschews anthropocentrism and of Muir’s description of it, the tone of the prose throughout this prose narrative, choosing instead becomes distinctly religious—or at least spiritual- to celebrate the energy that he finds outside of ly tinged . The storm ends in tranquility, and the human civilization and outside of himself . In so now-quiet trees are likened to “a devout audience ”. doing, he becomes like a tiny figure in a vast Suddenly, we are in church, or in Nature’s chapel, landscape painting, like those of Albert Bierstadt, and “the setting sun,” in Muir’s words, “seemed another artist and traveler who loved the land- to say, while they [the trees] listened, “My peace scapes of the American West . Or, to make a similar I give unto you ”. The Judeo-Christian God is, of comparison, we might think of the photographs of course, associated with light (from the first book Ansel Adams, whose exquisite shots capture the of Genesis) . Muir points us to this association, yet Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 78 GUIDE he alters the traditional religious scenario of a con- “There Will Come Soft Rains” gregation worshipping in a human-made church or temple, instead locating the holy in the wild —Analysis outdoors . The trees become congregants and the This poem’s renown owes largely to its use in the sun a beneficent deity, exemplifying the Romantic title of a short story by Ray Bradbury, a mid-twen- movement’s “natural supernaturalism,” its nature tieth-century author known for his science fiction . worship . In the end, Muir’s voice, the speaker of It is a compact poem about the ending of human what in the end looks very much like a prose poem, life and the continuation of the rest of the natural becomes a witness to immanence (the presence of world, a polished yet bitter judgment of a world (in Wordsworth’s sense of the term) engaged in the the divine in the material world): “never before did zero-sum game of world war . these noble woods appear so fresh, so joyous, so immortal ”. The technical features of the poem, rhyme, meter, alliteration, and assonance, all seem at odds with There is more than a hint of pastoral in this piece, the fact that this poem imagines a future in which especially in its closing paragraphs, where the “mankind perished utterly ”. narrative voice modulates into a more-than-usu- Only twelve lines long, this poem puts the read- ally reverential tone . The suggestion of pastoral er in a setting marked by familiar emblems of emerges when, at the end of the narrative, we real- nature—rain, “the smell of the ground,” frogs, ize that the narrator (who we can identify with Muir plum trees, and robins . We are very much at home himself), having left the urban world of civilization, in the first six lines; then, suddenly, everything finds in the green zone of the woods and moun- changes with the mention of “the war ”. Then, in tains a kind of alternative community: the trees the next six lines, Teasdale entertains the idea of themselves become his fellows . In so doing, he a world without human beings—a post-apocalyp- finds companionship (that of his beloved woods), tic world that retains a trace of human civilization pleasure (a high-energy experience), much to think in the form of “a low fence-wire” without any and write about, leisure (or at least recreation), and people left . Teasdale uses a series of emblematic peace . These are some of the hallmarks of pastoral . natural beings, from swallows to “Spring herself,” as utterly apathetic witnesses to a future where CTED W “mankind perished utterly ”. LE OR SE K • • • • • • • • • Notice the soothing sounds of the first line, and • • • • • • • notice that human agency has been removed . The “soft rains” are captured by the soft vowel sounds and liquid consonants: “will” and “smell” gently balance each other on either side of the middle of the first line, and “come,” “soft,” and “ground” There Will Come Soft Rains all suggest a gentle natural setting . By line two By Sara Teasdale we detect a pattern of consonance (repetition of consonant sounds, but not quite alliteration) in There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, “will,” “smell,” “swallows,” and “circling,” all of And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; which contain notable liquids (“l” sounds) . Lines three through five continue this pattern of liquids, And frogs in the pools, singing at night, with “pools,” “wild plum,” tremulous,” “will,” And wild plum trees in tremulous white, “whistling,” and “low,” right up to the “will” near the middle of the fifth line . Moreover, the adjec- Robins will wear their feathery fire, tives, from “soft” and “shimmering” to “wild” and Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; “tremulous,” all evoke a lovely natural setting . And not one will know of the war, not one Poetic devices abound . The first line contains a Will care at last when it is done . synesthesia, the description of one form of sense perception by reference to another . In this instance Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, the poet describes “swallows circling with their If mankind perished utterly; shimmering sound ”. Sound does not shimmer; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, visual objects do (or can) . In the eleventh line we encounter an easily recognized metaphor, a per- Would scarcely know that we were gone . sonification: “Spring herself, when she woke at dawn ”. Seasons do not, strictly speaking, sleep . Yet this personification seems particularly vivid Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 79 Strong medial caesuras make us pause in lines three, seven, and nine . A caesura is a pause in the middle of a line of poetry, and as such it gives the poet a chance to change directions or shift ideas, tone, or even meter . A caesura creates a kind of pivot-point or “reset” button for the poet and the reader . When a poem contains many caesuras, it is often a sign of some thematic conflict within the poem or within the speaker’s psyche . This poem contains three strong caesuras (those mentioned), marked by commas, but weaker caesuras can be found in the first two lines, where just a hint of a pause appears mid-line . When we reach the end of the poem and realize that we’ve just read a post-apocalyptic vision, we might be astonished at how the end of humanity crept up on us . At this point it behooves us to read the poem again; if we do, we might begin to suspect that Teasdale has sort of tiptoed up on us in the first few lines, with just a hint of tension in those barely present medial caesuras in the first two lines, only to whack us with the disclosures of lines six through twelve . Teasdale’s poem subtly uses poetic technique to amplify its thematic content, inviting us to imagine humanity’s demise in the deftest and most compact of verses . In the end, we are left gaping at the trick, for we realize the momentousness of the topic while very likely not having seen it coming . The theme, apocalypse, hardly fits the form, and the poem’s opening nowhere indicates that it will serve up such a powerful and terrifying image . The poem’s success lies in this deft trickery: to portray Poet Sara Teasdale. In her poem “There Will calamity as a matter of little consequence to nature Come Soft Rains,” Teasdale uses poetry in verses that barely register the calamity either . to cast a skeptical look at the destruction The natural world, here represented by flora, of which human beings are capable. fauna, weather, seasons, and diurnal rhythms, sim- Photo courtesy of the Macmillian Co. ply ignores the end of human civilization; so, too, in its musical imperturbability, does the language of the poem . No trumpets blare, and cymbals don’t because it appears directly following the thought crash . There are no explosions . The end has simply of what might happen “If mankind perished utter- happened without fanfare . ly ”. Thus, we have the very presence of humanity Wars often begin with great fanfare, and the entry being replaced by a personified season, Spring, of the United States into the First World War was that has been anthropomorphized . a momentous event (it took this country nearly three years to enter the war after it had begun in There is a hint of anthropomorphism in line five: Europe in 1914) . The war was given such grandiose “Robins will wear their feathery fire,” along with an titles as “The War to End All Wars” and “The Great elegant metaphor (the robins in question are not, War”; for many, it was an event of such magnitude of course, on fire, but the description is apt) . The that nothing else—certainly no prior military con- peaceful mood of rural retreat that emerges is rein- flict—could compare . Significant parts of Europe forced by the use of alliteration (repetition of initial were completely destroyed as many nations were pulled into the conflict . The global balance of consonant sounds) . Lines one, two, four, five, and power shifted; empires and nation-states were six all contain alliteration . See if you can pick transformed . Moreover, World War One produced them out . Of these, “Swallows circling/ sound,” a variety of excellent poetry, much of which Feathery/ fire,” and “Whistling/ whims” stand out reflects the physical and psychological realities as particularly evocative combinations . of soldiers . One might therefore expect a poem Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 80 GUIDE WORK • • • ED • • • • • • CT • • • E • • • EL • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • S • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

The Horses By Edwin Muir

Barely a twelvemonth after We make our oxen drag our rusty plows, The seven days war that put the world to sleep, Long laid aside . We have gone back Late in the evening the strange horses came . Far past our fathers’ land . By then we had made our covenant with silence, And then, that evening But in the first few days it was so still Late in the summer the strange horses came . We listened to our breathing and were afraid . We heard a distant tapping on the road, On the second day A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer . And at the corner changed to hollow thunder . On the third day a warship passed us, heading north, We saw the heads Dead bodies piled on the deck . On the sixth day Like a wild wave charging and were afraid . A plane plunged over us into the sea . Thereafter We had sold our horses in our fathers’ time Nothing . The radios dumb; To buy new tractors . Now they were strange to us And still they stand in corners of our kitchens, As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield . And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms Or illustrations in a book of knights . All over the world . But now if they should speak, We did not dare go near them . Yet they waited, If on a sudden they should speak again, If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak, Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent We would not listen, we would not let it bring By an old command to find our whereabouts That old bad world that swallowed its children quick And that long-lost archaic companionship . At one great gulp . We would not have it again . In the first moment we had never a thought Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep, That they were creatures to be owned and used . Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow, Among them were some half a dozen colts And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness . Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world, The tractors lie about our fields; at evening Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden . They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting . Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads We leave them where they are and let them rust: But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts . ‘They’ll molder away and be like other loam ’. Our life is changed; their coming our beginning .

about “the war” to emphasize the magnitude and “The Horses”—Analysis scope of the conflict, yet Teasdale’s tiny lyric poem is profoundly deflationary . By ignoring the vast Among the admirers of Edwin Muir’s “The Horses” investment of human effort and ingenuity in the is former Poet Laureate of the United States Robert Great War (tanks, chemical weapons, flame throw- Pinsky . In Pinsky’s words: ers, and airplanes were all used, and the loss of life Edwin Muir (1887–1959) is a mysterious- was enormous), the poet suggests that nature’s failure to notice “the war” might mean that, for ly neglected, gorgeous, and emotionally all its sound and fury, the conflict means nothing penetrating poet . Of all the many pieces to the denizens of nature . Teasdale uses poetry to of writing spurred by the Cold War and cast a skeptical look at the destruction of which the threat of nuclear apocalypse, and of human beings are capable . the other kinds of 20th century apocalyptic Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 81 writing, his poem “The Horses” may be the most effective, perhaps because it is the most calm and gentle . The plainness of the writing, the persuasive speech rhythms under the almost hidden iambic pulse, manifest immense art, culminating in a last line that could be incised in stone 74. In Pinsky’s summation “The Horses” is a poem that subtly questions some of our deepest assump- tions about progress in lines that quietly resonate long after they have been read . “The Horses” begins with imagery evocative of a final, catastrophic military conflict and ends with a vision of a post-industrial future in which humans and animals are reconciled . In the opening lines the emblems of modernity, from a warship to radios, feature prominently, all of them associated with destruction and devastation—an alienation built into the very fabric of urban-industrial civilization . The closing lines imagine the end of that alienation, which has been clearly associated with technology and artifice . Thus, “The Horses” can be read as antithetical in tone and outlook to Wordsworth’s “Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways” and to Whitman’s “Passage to India,” for the “motions and means” of progress effect not a celebratory passage to India, but the end of the world . Oddly enough, however, Edwin Muir’s use of horses evokes a common even though its dark tone could hardly contrast feature of environmental writing—the dream more with Whitman’s effusive one, “The Horses” of a more authentic connection with animals. shares with “Passage to India” a prophetic vision of a future world in which alienation and difference are reconciled . But whereas for Whitman it is apocalypse refers to the end of the world, or, to use technological progress that shall unite the world, a religious phrase, the end of days . for Muir it is an apocalypse that smashes “the old The speaker of “The Horses” retrospectively bad world” and reconciles humanity with the ani- describes the events of an apocalypse; it is, thus, mal kingdom—and with itself . The historical gap an explicitly post-apocalyptic poem . But the apoca- between the developing nineteenth-century world lypse in question is not the end of all things; it turns of Wordsworth and Whitman and Edwin Muir’s out, we learn, that this particular ending is merely twentieth-century experience is enormous, as is the conclusion of a certain world order—one that the gap in sensibility between these poets . is clearly evocative of urban-industrial modernity, It is clear from the start that this is a meditation with its war machine, internal-combustion-engine on the end of the world, more specifically on the powered vehicles (tractors, airplanes, a warship), Apocalypse, an event predicted in the Revelation of and attitude of dread . Herein lies the redemptive John, the last book of the New Testament . Derived aspect of this poem, for it ultimately offers an from a word meaning “revelation,” apocalypse has optimistic vision of a potential post-industrial, several meanings in the Bible . In the Old Testament radically postmodern recovery by returning to a (the Hebrew Bible), it refers to a moment of intense pastoral mode of life in which humans and animals spiritual insight; following John, however, the term collaborate . The term “pastoral” is a tricky one, as has come to mean, for devout Christians, the final the scholar Paul Alpers has argued in a book on and complete victory of good over evil . For others, the subject, but in general it refers to a way of life however, the term has a distinctly negative over- based on herding animals 75. Pastoral art and litera- tone, and its widespread use to describe a possible ture derives from the idealization of a rural way of nuclear holocaust during the Cold War has imbued life—the lives of shepherds and shepherdesses in the term with a distinctly negative aura . For an rural Greece and Rome . “The Horses” departs from Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 82 GUIDE pastoral conventions, but it emphatically ends with dream emerging from a nightmare in the poem’s a vision of human-animal pastoral collaboration . closing lines . In the opening line the speaker uses somewhat Muir’s use of horses evokes a common feature of archaic diction: a year is a “twelvemonth ”. The environmental writing, which is the dream of a apocalyptic war is called “the seven days war,” more authentic connection with animals, or, as is lasting the same amount of time as the Biblical the more common term in contemporary Animal creation of the world (counting the sabbath, or sev- Studies writings, “non-human animals,” a phrase enth day, a rest day) . But the diction is not archaic which emphasizes the fact that humans too are throughout the poem; indeed, it is powerfully animals . The horses’ return indicates that humans descriptive in an understated way: “no answer” are saved . This is not, of course, a Christian version and “the radios dumb ”. The post-war world seems of the apocalypse, for Christianity stipulates that at once futuristic and archaic, as if the apocalypse it is Christ who will return and redeem humanity had indeed collapsed time without ending abso- at the end of days . Here it is not Christ but horses lutely everything . The arrival of the horses occurs that provide redemption and salvation for human- in a reverential description evocative of classical kind . The horses will help these post-apocalyptic literature: the horses arrive “As fabulous steeds set humans plow their fields and share their struggle on an ancient shield,” evoking symbolic shields in classical literature, such as the shield of Achilles in to survive in a post-apocalyptic world and will help Homer’s Iliad or of Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid . provide humans with the bread they will break with their animal companions . This is a rather We should pay particular attention to the figura- literal, and quite animal, vision of a post-Christian tive work being done by horses; after all, the title communion . itself insists we do so . What do the horses stand for? What do they mean? What do they suggest The apocalypse Muir imagines is therefore not all or evoke? Traditionally, in Christian culture, the bad, as the poem’s last line suggests, for the con- symbology of the apocalypse has included four clusion of urban-industrial modernity allows for horsemen who signal the end of days with their the birth of a new world order that harkens back arrival . Thus, they remind us of the Biblical end of to a greener world . The horses that replace the days, an ominous and awful (as well as awesome) emblematic tractors (which represent industrial thing . But it would be a mistake to end here, for modernity) do not merely symbolize the end of that is not all that Muir’s horses represent . They are the world . They also stand for a return to an older, also associated with new life, “half a dozen colts/ rural way of life . As the poem makes this point, Dropped in some wilderness,” and, clearly, with “We have gone back/ Far past our fathers’ land ”. In wilderness, which reappears in the “broken world” doing so, the speaker suggests, the post-apocalyp- that follows the catastrophic war . Thus, after the tic civilization that emerges leaves behind material end of “That old bad world that swallowed its chil- acquisitiveness and private property: “we had dren quick” (line 19) a new set of horses arrives never a thought/ That they were creatures to be on the scene, not the harbingers of the end of the owned and used ”. Rather, the new companionship world this time, but just the opposite—emissaries with horses incorporates something long miss- of a future in which humans and animals reunite, ing from civilization, a trace of “wilderness” that but a future which is like the distant past (before remains in a relationship of “free servitude [that] the war that destroys civilization), having reestab- still can pierce our hearts ”. lished “that long lost archaic companionship” of tilth and pastoralism—of working together in the Here again the poet alludes to Christ, and again fields . the allusion is heterodox . Christ was wounded as The term the speaker uses to describe the new he carried the cross to Golgotha, stabbed in the human-horse symbiosis is “companionship,” a side by a Roman soldier . In “The Horses,” Muir’s word that derives from a Latin compound for redeemers, the horses themselves, become so sharing bread (cum-panis: “with bread”); thus, close to their human companions that a new the relationship between horses and humans that kind of passion emerges, a closeness that goes Muir imagines is an intimate one in which humans to the heart . Perhaps, in the end, this poem and animals live together and share their suste- offers a radical counter-version of progress in nance—literally, but also metaphorically . Muir thus which the destruction of warfaring urban-indus- suggests that a radically changed world order trial modern civilization contains the seeds of an might lead to a reemergence of a more pastoral edenic redemption of human and animal labor and way of life, and this possibility emerges like a companionship . 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Carmel Point By Robinson Jeffers

The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses— How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupine walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rock-heads— Now the spoiler has come: does it care? Not faintly . It has all time . It knows the people are a tide That swells and in time will ebb, and all Their works dissolve . Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty Lives in the very grain of the granite, Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff —As. for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident As the rock and ocean that we were made from .

“Carmel Point”—Analysis a pastoral region (“two or three horses pasturing,/ Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the From his hand-built stone tower on the Central outcrop rock-heads”) to something more unsightly, Coast of California, where he lived with his wife a place in which the human “tide” has encroached and soul mate, Robinson Jeffers did not look pos- on the region . itively at the development of the land to support the burgeoning mid-twentieth-century population . The word “crop” stands out in the second line In “Carmel Point” he develops a tension between of the poem because the suggestion that the “this beautiful place” and a newly constructed land might have grown the houses as the nearby “crop of suburban houses ”. This poem expresses a Salinas Valley grows fruit only heightens the sense sentiment that may be familiar to all of us: dismay of encroachment . These structures are clearly at at the transformation of a beloved landscape by odds with the appeal of “this beautiful place,” the forces of progress, here depicted as the literal which has changed for the worse over time . For advance of human civilization . Jeffers sees human the speaker, the beauty of the place belongs to progress, the growth of civilization, as an incursion the past—“How beautiful when we first beheld into the coastal landscape that he loved . it”—in contrast to which the unsightly present This brief lyric poem, just one line longer than seems unnatural . The stark binary that divides a sonnet (fifteen lines; sonnets have fourteen) the new houses from the beauty of the place also bespeaks an elegiac and stoical response to the separates the “tide” of “people” who intrude from encroachment of humanity upon a spectacular- “the pristine beauty” that “Lives in the very grain ly beautiful landscape . Human development, in of the granite ”. For Jeffers the elements of the the form of “a crop of suburban houses” has natural world are permanent and immutable: the “defaced” a “beautiful place,” transforming it from pristine beauty preserved in the granite, as well as Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 84 GUIDE “spoiler” that “has come” (line 7) refers to the intruding houses, yet we can discern in the landscape description that the signs of human presence have been a feature of the place for a lot longer . The speaker self-reflexively uses the first-person plural pronoun “we” instead of the more typical singular pronoun “I” . This lexical decision stands out and is somewhat disconcerting . Is the reader meant to understand it as the Royal We, or a plural we? Monarchs use the Royal We (consider the first scene of Shakespeare’s King Lear, for example) . Is the speaker a king? Or does he (it?) speak for some kind of group? If so, who or what? The answer seems to be a little bit of both: the speaker in “Carmel Point” has the tone of a self-ap- pointed monarch of the landscape who speaks for the features of the landscape itself—the “poppy and lupine walled with clean cliffs,” “the outcrop rock-heads,” the “grain of the granite ”. This interpretation appears confirmed in the closing lines of the poem, where the pronoun “we” becomes insis- tent even as the speaker announces an affiliation with the landscape over humanity . The poem ends with a statement of resolution that seems almost militant in its resistance to the encroaching tide of human development: “We must uncenter our minds from ourselves,” the speaker resolves, and “We must unhumanize our views a little,” as if an inward counter-effort were the best response to the “crop of suburban houses”—a rejection of his own ties to humanity . What is curious about this poem is the adjective “confident” in the penultimate line . The word (like its relatives “confidant” and “confide”), as the Oxford English Dictionary reminds us, comes from the Latin “confidere,” which itself is made up of the prefix “con,” together, and the root verb “fidere,” Robinson Jeffers at Hawk Tower to trust . The word “faith” ultimately comes from on the Carmel coast. the same Latin root (after a detour through French) . Photo/John Stanton, courtesy of Tor House Foundation. Jeffers asks his audience to have “trust together” in ourselves the same way that rock and ocean have confidence—and unusual expectation . “the endless ocean that climbs our cliff,” are safe “Confidence” is more often thought of as a quint- because they are allegedly timeless . essentially human trait, rather than something which characterizes the natural world . Flattening As in Edwin Muir’s “The Horses,” here too the the landscape and putting in a suburban hous- presence of farm animals symbolizes a bucolic ing development could certainly be described world, one that is unencumbered by the trappings by many nature writers as an instance of human of human civilization—and one that is being crowd- over-confidence . Here, instead, Jeffers insinuates ed out by human settlement . The horses and that humans build such things because of our lack “milch cows” (dairy cows) seem to be part of the of confidence, our insecurity . Like the tide to which landscape, even if they, too, are signs of human he likens humanity, we are unstable; we build encroachment (cows and horses having been houses in an attempt to shore up our insecure imported by Euro-American settlers) . Clearly, the human identity . 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Positive Feedback Loop (June 2007)

By Jorie Graham

I am listening in this silence that precedes . Forget everything, start listening . Tipping point, flash point, convective chimneys in the seas bounded by Greenland . Once there was thunder and also salvos at the four corners of the horizon, that was war . In Hell they empty your hands of sand, they tell you to refill them with dust and try to hold in mind the North Atlantic Deep Water which also contains contributions from the Labrador Sea and entrainment of other water masses, try to hold a complete collapse, in the North Atlantic Drift, in the thermohaline circulation, this will happen, fish are starving to death in the Great Barrier Reef, the new Age of Extinctions is now says the silence-that-precedes—you know not what you are entering, a time beyond belief . Who is one when one calls oneself one? An orchestra dies down . We have other plans for your summer is the tune . Also your winter . Maybe the locks at Isigny will hold, I will go look at them tomorrow . I will learn everything there is of this my spouse the future, here in my earth my parents’ house, the garden of the continuing to think about them, there is nothing else in fact but the past, count the days count the cities you have visited, also what comes to keep you awake, also dew while you finally sleep—can you ever enter the strange thing, the name that is yours, that “is” you— the place where the dead put their arms around you, & you can just taste it the bitterness, & you would speak for your kind but they will laugh at you—both the naming and the kind—also thin air will laugh that’s what it’s doing look— Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 86 GUIDE feather, invisible bog, positive feedback loops—& the chimneys again, & how it is the ray of sun is taken in in freedom, & was there another way for this host our guest, we who began as hands, magic of fingers, laying our thresholds stone upon stone, stretched skins between life and death, always smoke rising to propitiate the star that might turn black, quick give back to it before it kills you, speed your thought to it, till your feet themselves are weary not just your heart—the skins, the flesh, the heat, the soil, the grain, the sound of each birdcall heard over the millennia, autumn’s maneuverings into winter, splinters of dream-filled times, beauty that pierces, yes, always we were vulnerable to beauty, why should it be otherwise—time and its wonders as it passes and things grow, & the rippings of death heal, & the blossoms come which one can just for a minute longer look at, take in, & the mind finds itself uncertain again, it calls, something hangs up on it,just like that, you hear the receiver go down, power and its end, something else smiling elsewhere on another world, us in The Great Dying again, the time in which life on earth is all but wiped out again—we must be patient—we must wait—it is a lovely evening, a bit of food a bit of drink—we shall walk out onto the porch and the evening shall come on around us, unconcealed, blinking, abundant, as if catching sight of us, everything in and out under the eaves, even the grass seeming to push up into this our world as if out of homesickness for it, gleaming .

“Positive Feedback Loop”—Analysis to a system (often natural, such as an ecosystem), the immediate effects of which exacerbate and One does not typically expect a scientific phrase to ramify the disturbance, causing it to grow . The be used for the title of a poem, yet Jorie Graham ultimate result of the initial disturbance is therefore does exactly that in “Positive Feedback Loop,” amplified by the immediate effects, which might a poem from her 2008 poetry collection Sea at first seem small; this result, be it a population Change . A positive feedback loop is a disturbance crash or an ecosystemic regime shift, is ultimately Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 87 tives, and stream-of-consciousness to develop a theme, often with the effect of disorienting the reader . Such is the case in “Positive Feedback Loop,” which begins with a sub-title in the form of a date: June 2007 . Immediately, then, we realize we are thrust into the present (or nearly the present), and in very few lines we realize that we are reading about the marine environmental crisis that is slowly unfolding as a result of global climate change . In Sea Change, Graham draws on recent research in the marine sciences in order to imagine an anthropogenic marine disaster—something of a watery apocalypse . One quickly gathers that the poet wishes to perform, in verse, a version of the poem’s title; she uses the craft of poetry to create a kind of positive feedback loop . Of course, this is a metaphor, inevitably, for the poem itself is not a physical system, nor can its opening be defined as a disturbance . But one implication of Graham’s opening line is that a poem itself acts like a positive feedback loop—a disturbance to the quotidian flow of experience that will resonate far beyond the reading of Poet Jorie Graham, Iowa City, Iowa, 1997. the poem . Photo ©2008–2013 Jorie Graham. The first two lines of the poem are visually arresting: All Rights Reserved. “I am listening in this silence that precedes . Forget far greater (often exponentially so) than would everything, start listening . Tipping point, seem warranted by the size or degree of the initial flash” disturbance . Enjambment—the technique of ending a line of poetry without end punctuation (often, as in this Positive feedback loops occur frequently in nature, case, in the middle of a sentence)—creates tension most often (but not always) when human behavior for the reader, who inevitably feels rushed to see disturbs natural processes . For example, global what will appear at the start of the next line . In climate change is right now causing many regions this case, Graham’s decision to end the first line of Arctic tundra to release methane gas from with the command “forget” creates even greater thawing ground that used to be permafrost, where tension . Forget what? The reader must ask, and in methane had been sequestered and kept inert by line two, the left margin of which is aligned with the cold . Just a few degrees of warming causes an the center of the page (beginning almost where enormous amount of methane to be released, and the first line ends) we find an answer: “everything, recent warming trends are putting natural methane start listening ”. The reader thus becomes situated into the atmosphere in high concentrations . Since much like the speaker: in an attitude of listening methane is a particularly effective (or destructive) in silence for a sound that will presumably arrive . greenhouse gas (even more so than carbon diox- Line two continues: “Tipping point, flash/” and ide), the effects of the initial temperature increase again the reader is left hanging by the conspicu- ultimately cause further warming by intensifying ous enjambment, at least until line three, “point, /” the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere . Thus, the which finishes the phrase “flash point ”. The speak- widespread release of methane in the Arctic accel- er asserts, “I am listening in this silence that erates the rate of global climate change . This is just precedes ”. Precedes what? The answer is sug- one example of a positive feedback loop; others gested in the next line: “Tipping point, flash/ point can be found throughout the sciences, including (lines 2–3) . So we are instructed by the speaker, the marine sciences . as if by a teacher or an autocrat, to listen for the Graham’s formally innovative poems can be chal- signals of a tipping point or flash point . lenging to read, often appealing (in this collection) Again we encounter scientific language . A tipping to the eye more than the ear . The poet employs point is a moment when the build-up of some force varying line lengths, white space, broken narra- or set of forces suddenly exceeds the strength of Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 88 GUIDE the resisting object or force, as when two children environmental calamity at a global level . After this of equal weight on a see-saw are joined by third, calamitous vision, the speaker is brought, almost who sits on one side and causes it to tip . Scientists humorously, back to herself: “An orchestra dies often speak of tipping points, as do policymakers . down . We have other plans/ for your summer is the For example, if a particular fish stock, such as tune ”. Other plans indeed . Atlantic Cod on Georges Bank off Massachusetts, The poem then moves away from imagining a is overharvested, continuing to fish at unsustain- able levels will reach a tipping point when the cod future disaster that has already begun and into an population will crash (as has happened) and the internal monologue, a stream-of-consciousness entire ecosystem can follow suit (which also has flow of thoughts and words, concerning identity happened) . These are not common poetic phrases, as a function of being grounded in experience, and Graham deploys them in this poem to startling relationships, and the body . The metaphysical effect . speculations in lines twenty-five and following seem to devolve into an inward spiral of self-re- The poem continues to develop the idea of past, flexivity; what holds this section together is the existing, and impending catastrophes by sug- overarching sense of the speaker’s crisis of iden- gesting the ongoing presence of general global tity, having been catalyzed by anxiety about a catastrophes . In line four we learn of “convective chimneys in the seas bounded by Greenland,” and world on the verge of environmental collapse . in line five we hear of “salvos at the four corners “Was there another way for/ this host/our guest, / of the horizon, that was/ war ”. Are we to imag- we who began as hands, magic of fingers, laying ine a post-apocalyptic scenario, or do these lines our thresholds stone upon stone, stretched skins refer to current conflicts as well as environmental between life and death,/ always smoke rising to crises? We never learn . But the poem’s setting propitiate the star that might turn black ”. seems futuristic, the brewing problems associated In this poet’s dark night of the soul, the deepest with climate change and with global political strife anxiety lives in the notion that beauty can cease, apparently having already reached a point of no “the mind/ finds itself uncertain again, it calls, return—a tipping point for one (climate change) something hangs up on it, just like that, you hear/ and a flash point for the other (warfare) . the receiver go down, power and its end …”. The What Graham examines in this poem is the immi- logic, here, of the speaker’s interior monologue nent possibility of “complete collapse,” of a world is panic about the end of life on earth as well as in which human behavior has altered a part of the the negative theology that it entails . The speaker natural world as fundamental as “thermohaline cir- imagines “something else smiling elsewhere on culation” in the world’s oceans (line twelve) . “This/ another world,” as if the deity had moved on from will happen,” the speaker informs us; moreover, this experiment, on this planet, to another one the crisis is already upon us: “fish are starving more fortunate . to death in the Great Barrier Reef, the new Age of Extinctions is/ now” (lines 14–15) . All this the In the end, the speaker resolves that the only speaker learns from listening to “the silence-that- possible response to the consciousness of living precedes”; and, to make matters worse, that is on the brink of “The Great Dying again, the time only the beginning of calamity, for “you know not in which life on earth is all but wiped out/ again” what/ you/ are entering, a time/ beyond belief ”. is to “be patient—we must wait—it is a/ lovely The tab—a white space jump—to “beyond belief” evening, a bit of food and drink—we/ shall walk/ creates a vertiginous reading experience, the read- out onto the porch and the evening shall come on er is suddenly plunged headlong across the page around us, unconcealed,/ blinking, abundant, as if into…(s)he knows not what . And then instead of catching sight of us …”. These lines articulate an foretelling an even more gruesome doom, the experience of negative theology, a condition of speaker poses the rhetorical question, “Who is one being abandoned by whatever higher power and when one calls oneself/ one?” We surely cannot meaning might have preceded the present . Having know . The implication here, of course, is that a outlasted the happy era of a world not manifestly world erased of its familiar features—marine life, on the brink of environmental collapse, the speak- the great oceanic gyres—also must erase the self er turns to small things, seeking to appreciate and any notion of identity . the present in all its rich detail, “even the grass,” What the speaker hears in “the-silence-that- which the speaker perceives at the poem’s end to precedes,” then, is the prophecy of impending be “gleaming ”. 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To the Field of Scotch Broom that Will Be Buried by the New Wing of the Mall By Lucia Perillo

Half costume jewel, half parasite, you stood swaying to the music of cash registers in the distance while a helicopter chewed the linings of the clouds above the clear-cuts . and I forgave the pollen count while cabbage moths teased up my hair before your flowers fell apart when they turned into seeds . How resigned you were to your oblivion, unlistening to the cumuli as they swept past . And soon those gusts will mill you, when the backhoe comes to dredge your roots, but that is not what most impends, as the chopper descends to the hospital roof so that somebody’s heart can be massaged back into its old habits . Mine went a little haywire at the crest of the road, on whose other side you lay in blossom . As if your purpose were to defibrillate me with a thousand electrodes, one volt each .

Lucia Perillo, “To the Field of Scotch Broom That Will Be Buried by the New Wing of the Mall” from On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths . Copyright © 2012 by Lucia Perillo . Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc ., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www .coppercanyonpress .org .

“To the Field of Scotch Broom that It also produces a good deal of pollen—no fun for those with allergies (including the speaker of the Will Be Buried by the New Wing of the poem) . Mall”—Analysis Laden with anthropomorphism (and indeed with its The title of Perillo’s brief lyric poem tells us a good extreme form, personification), this poem expresses a complex response to the converging forces deal about what to expect, but not everything . of land development and medical technology in Poets of many eras have given their works titles contemporary America—in this case, presumably that signal their intention of addressing someone in a suburban area in the Pacific Northwest . The or something in particular . Odes, for example, fre- speaker addresses a field of weeds that is slated quently address military and political heroes . This to be developed, or destroyed (depending on your poem addresses a weed . Scotch Broom is a woody perspective), in order to make room for a shop- shrub that grows quickly in spaces that have ping mall expansion, suggesting that nature and been clear cut (timbered off), and in the Pacific human “motions and means,” to use Wordsworth’s Northwest it is considered an especially noxious phrase, are not very far removed from each other . weed because it prevents new trees from growing . The field of blooming brush sways “to the music Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 90 GUIDE of cash registers,” fated already to be buried “when the backhoe comes/ to dredge your roots ”. Moving between images of what will happen to the field once the builders come and impressions of a medevac helicopter landing on a nearby hospital roof, the speaker develops an analogy between technology as a tool of land development and as a means of saving lives . Whereas prior generations of poets, such as Wordsworth and Whitman, were famous for writing about daffodils, sunflowers, lilacs, or other attrac- tive plant life, this poem chooses to address—or apostrophize—a field of undesirable plants which are likely thriving because of the human impact Poet Lucia Perillo. of logging on the landscape . Clearly, nature in Photo Credit: James Rudy. this instance is not simply a happy green space; rather, it is a transient, ecologically complex zone just enough similarity between the two words caught in a complex fabric of human involvement . “past” and “gusts” to create a partial rhyme (or Even as the speaker seems to lament the loss of off rhyme), here too placed on either side of the a bright field of blossoming plants, she suggests caesura . that the good goes with the bad—human inventiveness, while it can be destructive, can also save Perrillo employs traditional poetic techniques sub- lives . But the poem goes even further, suggesting tly throughout the poem . In line four, for example, that nature, too, can redeem and revitalize human “clouds” and “clear-cuts” form a clear alliteration consciousness . (repetition of initial consonants), and in line seven we find “flowers fell” in the middle of the line, In terms of poetic form, “To the Field of Scotch which is not only alliterative but contains conso- Broom” is initially marked by the playful anthropo- nance (repetition of non-initial consonants—here, morphism suggested, in the first place, by “Scotch” the “l” sound in flowers and fell) . These deft (an archaic form of “Scottish”), and then by the moves on the part of the poet make the poem seem apostrophization of “you,” as if the weeds were like a flirtation with some more traditional form, a person, by the suggestion of dancing, “swaying such as the sonnet, an effect that reinforces the to the music,” and then by the development of the suggestion of what Wordsworth calls “old poetic personification through the rest of the first stan- feeling” haunting Perillo’s poem . za . As the first stanza develops, we also see its intensive use of the medial caesura, a pause in the But this poem is resolutely postmodern, describing middle of a line that may or may not be signaled by an experience that blurs the line between nature punctuation . In line eight, for example, the period and culture, its vision of nature linking technolog- after “seeds” occurs in the middle of the line, and ical devices with flowering plants even as it sets then a new sentence begins: “How resigned you them in opposition . In the end, Perillo reverses were …”. Line nine, too, has a medial caesura, this the direction of the forces she describes—until the one marked by a comma . This division of some last several lines, the poem’s forces all go in one lines into two parts creates a kind of see-saw direction, with human technology intervening in dynamic, recapitulating the thematic back-and- natural processes (the helicopter in the clouds, the forth between nature and technology and between massaging of a dying heart back to normal, and the impending arrival of the backhoes to expand the material present and a half-prophesied future the mall), not the other way around . But in the (“your oblivion,” “what most impends”) . second, short stanza this dynamic is reversed: There is no formal rhyme scheme in this poem, the speaker’s heart goes “a little haywire/ at the but rhyme is nonetheless present and highly crest of the road, on whose other side/ you lay in effective . For Perillo uses internal rhyme—rhyming blossom ”. Notice the diction: “haywire” simultane- words within a single line—in line 12: “what most ously evokes images of hayfields and defibrillation impends, as the chopper descends ”. The rhyme wires . With this reversal of the nature-technology of impends and descends, placed on either side dynamic present in the preceding fifteen lines, of a medial caesura, creates a musical effect at the poem turns the tables on the speaker’s initial the moment when uncertainty materializes in the anthropocentrism, suggesting that nature, too, form of a flying steel machine containing a heart contains energy of a potentially transformative attack victim . A little earlier, in line ten, there is kind, like the human heart . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 91 Notes

1 . See Hiltner, 2001 . 23 . Pilgrim, p . 6 . 2 . Scheese, p . 214 . 24 . Pilgrim, p . 6 . 3 . Quoted in Scheese, p . 227 . 25 . Pilgrim, p . 8 . 4 . Further discussion of literary keywords can be 26 . Pilgrim, p . 10 . found in a variety of guides, glossaries, and 27 . Pilgrim, p . 18 . handbooks of literary terms, including those by Abrams, Harmon and Holman, and Barton 28 . Pilgrim, p . 34 . and Hudson (see bibliography) . 29 . Pilgrim, p . 33 . 5 . “A Pilgrim’s Progress ”. New York Times April 30 . Pilgrim, p . 26 . 26, 1992 . 31 . Pilgrim, p . 35 . 6 . Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, front matter . 32 . Pilgrim, p . 47 . 7 . Smith, pp . 3–6 . 33 . Pilgrim, p . 39 . 8 . Smith, pp . 3–13 . 34 . Pilgrim, p . 53 . 9 . Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University 35 . Pilgrim, p . 62 . Press, 1998 . 36 . Pilgrim, p . 75 . 10 . See Parrish, pp . 123–163 . 37 . Pilgrim, pp . 79–80 . 11 . See Donald M . Frame’s translation of The Complete Essays of Montaigne . 38 . Pilgrim, p . 97 . 12 . Smith, p . 14 . 39 . Pilgrim, p . 33 . 13 . Thoreau, in Finch and Elder, eds . p . 180 . 40 . Pilgrim, p . 113 . 14 . Robert Finch and John Elder, eds ,. p . 867 . 41 . Pilgrim, p . 122 . 15 . Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New 42 . Pilgrim, p . 123 . York: Harper Collins, 2007) 6 . 43 . Pilgrim, p . 133 . 16 . Pilgrim, p . 10 44 . Pilgrim, p . 133 . 17 . Pilgrim, p . 3 . 45 . Pilgrim, p . 141 . 18 . Pilgrim, p . 3 . 46 . Pilgrim, p . 139 . 19 . Walden (Princeton edition), p . 97 . 47 . Pilgrim, pp . 151–53 . 20 . Pilgrim, p . 5 . 48 . Pilgrim, p . 161 . 21 . Pilgrim, p . 6 . 49 . Pilgrim, p . 177 . 22 . Pilgrim, p . 13 . 50 . Pilgrim, p . 178 . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA 2014–2015 • USA D LITERATURE RE SOURCE 92 GUIDE 51 . Pilgrim, p . 181 . 64 . Pilgrim, p . 256 . 52 . Pilgrim, p . 14 . 65 . Pilgrim, p . 248 . 53 . Pilgrim, p . 189 . 66 . Pilgrim, p . 255; Walden, p . 91 . 54 . Pilgrim, p . 195 . 67 . Pilgrim, p . 263 . 55 . Pilgrim, p . 200 . 68 . Pilgrim, p . 265 . 56 . Pilgrim, p . 205 . 69 . Pilgrim, p . 267 . 57 . Pilgrim, p . 228 . 70 . Pilgrim, p . 270 . 58 . Pilgrim, p . 230 . 71 . Pilgrim, p . 273 . 59 . Pilgrim, p . 229 . 72 . Pilgrim, p . 277 . 73 . Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads . 60 . Pilgrim, p . 230 . 74 . Slate . com: www .slate .com/articles/arts/ 61 . Pilgrim, p . 236 . poem/1999/01/the_horses .html (Posted Jan . 62 . Pilgrim, p . 236 . 14, 1999) . Last accessed September 2, 2013 . 63 . Pilgrim, p . 241 . 75 . See Alpers, 1997, especially the Introduction . Western Sierra Collegiate Academy - Rocklin, CA TURE RESOURCE GUIDE USAD LITERA 2015 • 2014– 93 Bibliography

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