Ale Velazquez
Final
Nature and the Transcendence of Love

Throughout the semester we covered a wide range of poems, but overall I found this theme between nature and love to be rather consistent. I chose the word transcend in my definition of the works we discussed because love alone did not seem sufficient enough to convey the timelessness that is associated with many of the poems. Moreover, in many of the poems that we interpreted there was a  definite spiritual aspect to them, or at least some form of love that was larger than life. The oed defines transcend as to pass over or go beyond a physical or non physical obstacle or limit. With this being said, the transcendence of love is essentially all of the ideas, feelings, and forces associated with love that are able to defy reality. More specifically, this reality tends to be the inevitable part of life that is death along with time. Through our readings, I discovered that poets have very often utilized nature as a metaphoric vessel to define this force.  

Taking it back to Sir William Shakespeare's Sonnet 15, this idea of nature and the transcendence of love is clearly integrated throughout the poem. From beginning to end, Shakespeare utilizes nature to describe the beloved's existence and even goes on to project what will be of him once his time comes to an end.  At the start of the poem, the speaker introduces, "everything that grows," and how he, "perceive[s] that men as plants increase/cheered and cheque'd even by the self-same sky (line 5,6)." He speaks of how men much like plants are encouraged and thwarted by the same sky. That "sky" may represent the sun, which is one of the main sources of life on Earth that both plants and humans depend on.  The poem continues to speak about how time is waging against the beloved and will inevitably bring his astounding youth to an end. Nevertheless, the poet provides a solution to the beloved's inevitable decay. Through reproduction, or "engraftment" as Shakespeare defines it, the beloved may be able to live on for centuries to come. The poet engrafts the beloved through poems.  

In fact, these poems Shakespeare wrote about the beloved to this day have immortalized the beloved, the devotion to the beloved has transcended death and time. For one, the Shakespearean sonnet is still one of the most commended forms of sonnets. For centuries, writers and artists still use  his plots and his characters as a standard of excellence (litstack.com). Similarly, iambic pentameter, Shakespeare's main poetic form, is still a canonical meter form of poetry and prevalent in sonnets. As a result of Shakespeare's success, the magnification of the beloved has allowed the beloved to live on through poetry. Every time someone reads Sonnet 15, whether it is for reference, leisure, or study the beloved is admired through the poet's eyes. In this way, through love-driven poetic engraftment the beloved's existence has transcended mortality. 

Moving on to the 19th century, Swinburne's "A Forsaken Garden" is a continuation of nature and the transcendence of love. This narrative form poem tells the story of a ghostly garden. In the first stanza the poem introduces the garden from the outside in. Surrounded by a wall of rocks, this garden lies near the shore. Here the grey walks have lain restless for an undefined time period, and the only life one will find is the sea's restless night and day (line 17,18). Stanza three and four continue to depict the empty track, leftover rose thorns, rocks, the flowers that do not exist, and the birds that are not present to sing. Emptiness is all that encompasses this garden. 

 It is not until stanza five that two lovers are introduced. They once laughed, cried, and were happy, but no one will ever know because they are long gone ( line 39,40). Stanza six, the only time there is dialogue, states, "look thither," refering out to sea, where, "the foam-flowers endure when the rose blossoms wither (43)." The last line of this stanza very clearly states, "love was dead.(48)" Much like everything else that has been forsaken in the garden, love as it is represented by the roses has withered and only the sea, sun, and rain remain unmoved. However, in stanza seven the notion to keep love alive is brought back. The poem reads, "love deep as the sea as a rose must wither." In other words, love deeply for it inevitably will fade away. One has no control of love or its loss. 

 Similar to sea's waves, the poem's contextual structure takes you on a ride where forces are still, move, crash, and are smooth again much like the cycle of love and life itself. Moreover, the rhyme scheme, ABABCDCDCD, is consistent throughout the entire poem; this is very helpful alongside the rhyme scheme. Swinburne's diction and play on words is very smooth. His use of alliteration is not distorting, instead it assists the poem's fluidity and similarly mimics the sea's smooth waves.

Like the sea reference, the poem is also a rendition of how the power of love has the ability to even surpass emptiness. Perhaps this may seem a bit confusing, for how could love overcome that which does not exist or is not present. This, however, is the basic idea of Swinburne's poem; love, as it is symbolized through the roses in the poem, was so prevalent that even in its absence the remnants of its existence are still present. Swinburne gracefully describes all that is not there but could be or perhaps once was there indeed.  

Again through an enamored description of nature, Swinburne uses this natural vessel to create the setting of the poem, a forsaken garden. There is, "not a flower present," in the, "blossomless bed," there are only rocks and, "only the rain and sun come hither." The poem's mood is by no means elated, in fact it is rather empty and somber, but despite this there still arises a sense of hope. In the last line the poem states, "Death lies dead," a very somber statement indeed, but this sort of personification confirms the idea that there still lies hope, perhaps for life in the garden once again, or perhaps for love. By stating that Death is dead the author is implying that Death has been defeated. From this arise  new opportunities.  

Nevertheless, the concept of nature and the transcendence of love that we read throughout the semester was not limited to romantic love. Take Rekdal's Artic Scale poem for example, in this instance, Rekdal bases her poem on photographs taken by Subhankar Banerjee. These photographs depicted the  Gwich'in tribe hunting caribou. In stanza one, Rekdal introduces this first image in a reverent way. The hunter is described as a dancer as he cuts away at the flesh. One with the caribou, the indigenous people's way of life is glorified rather than antagonized. Rekdal acknowledges the love the Gwich'in people have for their land and the caribou. As stated by one of them, "“Caribou are not just what we eat; they are who we are. They are in our stories and songs and the whole way we see the world. Caribou are our life. Without caribou we wouldn’t exist."  With this at hand,  Rekdal pays homage to them. 

Further into the poem when Rekdal describes, the landscape images. 

Stanzas 8-10 describe an aerial view of the caribou herd. Where, "it's white/ 

across which ant-like bodies of pregnant caribou (line 27, 28)."  Lastly, the last stanza reads,  

In the last, the man has left a flap  

of caribou skin to dry.  

It lies in a shrunken patch of snow, small  

as a child's pink mitten  

beside him; a valentine 

Here Rekdal brings the reader back to the children, the Gwich'in people's new generations and in essence their future. She refers to the dried skin as an endearing gift to show that even the children honor the caribou. The indigenous people are one with nature, and they are devoted to it. As with the previous poems that were mentioned, this love for the land has surpassed time and change. Rekdal also makes a point about how pollution is affecting the land in lines 35 and 36. In more recent times, it should also be noted that although the people may have partially adapted to new technology and these sort of negative changes that our new society has imposed on the land, they are still true to their traditions and are continuing to carry on their life with the land. Through her observation, Rekdal shows how the Gwich'in people's love for the land has allowed them to remain true to their culture despite the shrinking world around them.  

Overall, this concept between nature and love's transcendence was present all throughout the semester, starting with elegies and ending with gardens. As we learned in class, poetry is about the experience it inflicts on the reader. Many times this experience is a resonance of that "transcendence" which surpasses physical and non physical limits. Poets we read spoke about love, loss, heartbreak, hope, and many other human experiences that forced them to express themselves. Comparing that transcendence to nature, it is evident that, much like nature, love's transcendence is all encompassing and cannot be controlled. The man who lost his child in the fire, and the lovers that faded away like the sea -just did. Like the sea, the gardens, the sky that the nightingales roamed, nature's flow is free flowing, essentially the same as love's. Certain limits such as loss, death, and time were overcome by love.      

http://www.subhankarbanerjee.org/photohtml/arctic-photo-white-04.html 

http://litstack.com/reinventing-shakespeare/