Sebastian Barnes
While reinvestigating all of our work throughout the semester I noticed most of the poems “about” nature only appeared so on first glance. Rarely did poets actually choose to comment on nature itself, but used it to up space to talk about human problems and ideas. In this post I hope to dissect how the poets we’ve read use nature to help us understand our own problems and also determine why nature is so critical to conveying these ideas. I will move chronologically through the poems The Bird and the Arras; Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes; and Cascade Raptor Center: Capture then conclude by discussing how this thread show why nature plays such an important role in the poetry I cover.
Anne Finch’s poem The Bird and the Arras follows a female bird trapped in an arras. Arras is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as: A rich tapestry fabric, in which figures and scenes are woven in colours. In the second definition it further refines this definition as: A hanging screen of this material formerly placed round the walls of household apartments, often at such a distance from them as to allow of people being concealed in the space between.
The literal interpretation of this poem follows this bird imitating the birds it see in a tapestry and becoming trapped within said tapestry. In the lines “Where immitated Fowl their pinnions ply. / Seeming to mount in flight and aiming still more high,” we see the bird struggle to assimilate with these false birds reaching for the sky. In the end the bird is given a helping hand and is able to escape the tapestry to fly freely.
The allegory here is not very complicated but still very clever. The poem is autobiographical and the bird is allegorically representative of Finch herself. In her poetry foundation’s biography post they discuss how the “images of entrapment and frustration are echoed in Finch’s description of the limitations of women’s social roles in England at the turn of the 18th century.” The Allegory is so effective because the Arras is a piece of art representing the world of art she hopes to break into, and the bird’s flight is representative of the heights she wants to attain in writing poetry. Her breaking free of the bounds of the current world of poetry is also very crafty as it describes the current world of poetry as static and flat.
Now comes the question of, why use nature to explain this idea? I think the choice of the bird was done for a couple of reasons. First is the historical relationship birds have with poetry. Finch wanted to illustrate that she could use a trope in a new and inventive way. But more importantly than that I believe the bird is a perfect fit because it functions to illustrate the importance of poetry to her. Without flight a bird is nothing and I believe Finch meant to suggest the same thing about her relationship to poetry. I took this to be a further commentary on the social roles of women at the time. When she is caught up imitating other poets she is no one. It is only when she crafts her own individual style that she can be relevant because not only is she a woman poet but also just strictly a woman. Without poetry her society would think of her as nothing more than a pretty face. Ultimately, Finch’s use of nature here crafts a much stronger argument than any other allegory could have because of the agency which birds have access to when they can fly.
Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes is Thomas Gray’s mock elegy for the dead cat of his friend Horace Walpole. Walpole was quite the luxurious individual and he collected many treasures from around the world. This opulence is mocked in the poem when the cat dies of chasing after a goldfish, emphasis on gold. Though this may just be an artifact of the time, the aabccb rhyme scheme seems to add to the mocking tone. The juxtaposition between the comedic nature of the poem and the tight form only heightens the joke. The poem warns against the desires of the cat and ends with the line “Nor all that glisters gold.” I hadn't known this until writing this post, but the poetry foundations biography on Gray seems to suggest Walpole and him had somewhat of a falling out which they never entirely got over before the writing of this poem. Maybe the mocking of the greed of the poem is tied to some animosity Gray still harbored toward him, although there is no way for us to know this.
The poem makes multiple comparisons between the cat and the female figure. As Hayley pointed out in her post the cat has a "fair round face" (8), “velvety paws” (9), she sports a "coat, that with the tortoise vies," (10), and she has "emerald eyes" (11). Additionally the cat is described as a “presumptuous maid!,” which seems like a bit much to be talking about just a cat (even if cats do seem to do whatever they please.) Though, the line that makes it unquestionably clear he is comparing the cat to women is “What female heart can gold despise?” While the poem is about a female cat chasing a goldfish Gray essentially drops all pretense that he is talking about a cat at this point and slaps us in the face with his allegory.
What’s not initially clear here is why Gray makes his critique of greed about women. Maybe he had recently had some girl issues or maybe he didn’t want to poke too much fun directly at his friend whose cat died. I choose to interpret this poem as a critique of the domestication of the women in the era and how this treatment necessarily lead to the kind of greed Grey is critical of. When women are locked up in the house all day and told their worth is derived from the value of that house of course they would obsess over glistening artifacts, because they are made to think the beauty of their home is tied to their own self-worth. When looking through this lens the use of nature as an allegorical device is entirely necessary. There is no way to discuss the way domestication affects bodies without talking about a domesticated body. That is to say, Grey chooses a natural allegory because they are the only bodies that were subjected to the same level of control that was placed over women. When reading the poem this way not only is this choice of subject necessary but also brilliant.
In Andrew Feld’s poem Cascade Raptor Center: Capture his use of nature isn’t allegorical but rather it exists within the literal world of the poem. The poem follows a boy and his father after the boy shoots an endangered hawk. The hawk serves as sympathetic figure to show the way we deal with grief and how we relate to violence.
In the first section of the poem each line begins with the phrase “he hadn’t meant to hit the bird,” and with each repetition the emphasis shifts. It begins with “meant” and then shifts to “hadn’t” both of which suggest how sure the speaker is that concerned with intent of the action to an increasing degree. Next the word “hit” is emphasized, which suggests the speaker may have come to terms with the fact that the boy had to have been trying to shoot near the bird to hit it in the first place, but holds on to hope that the boy intended to miss the bird. Next the whole line is emphasized which suggests a final attachment to the disbelief of the situation. The speaker really wants to trust that the boy didn’t want to harm the bird. Finally the last repetition has no emphasis and is followed by the question “who cared?” At this point the speaker realizes that intent doesn’t play into the importance of the event and all the really matters is what transpired. This leads into the latter half of the poem which shows the son and father’s agonizing car trip to the raptor preserve.
The bird is so important in the poem the speaker goes as far to suggest “if he’d killed a man we’d all have been more compassionate.” This shows how our relationship with nature is fundamentally different from our relationship with humans in that, human must earn our compassion while animal are granted it without question because they are innocent. Animals in our mind never deserve violence because they cannot do evil, they can only act against the wishes of humanity unknowingly.
Nature is necessary in this poem because we can rationalize the death of a human, but an endangered animals can never be justly killed. This is what creates the grief that permeates the latter half of the poem. Nature here teaches the son, and by proxy the reader, how grief works. Often time there is no reconciliation or closure. Some mistakes are just mistakes with nothing to learn from them but to not repeat them. Without the innocence of the bird the poem doesn’t create the same tension because the father and other adults wouldn’t shame the son in the same way, as they would trust he already felts bad enough. The choice to have nature be harmed is a conscious one and while there is some commentary on nature itself in this poem the crux of it is in how the event reflects on the son and father.
When beginning to write this paper I expected to discuss how anthropocentric all these authors where in choosing to talk about human problems using nature, but after looking back at the semester I’ve discovered that poets choose nature as a tool to drive their themes because we are intimately tied with it. We relate to animals so readily that it allows for poets to discuss ideas in the abstract without becoming boring. Ultimately I think that poets use natural metaphors and references because we are more connected to nature then we may initially assume.
The allegory here is not very complicated but still very clever. The poem is autobiographical and the bird is allegorically representative of Finch herself. In her poetry foundation’s biography post they discuss how the “images of entrapment and frustration are echoed in Finch’s description of the limitations of women’s social roles in England at the turn of the 18th century.” The Allegory is so effective because the Arras is a piece of art representing the world of art she hopes to break into, and the bird’s flight is representative of the heights she wants to attain in writing poetry. Her breaking free of the bounds of the current world of poetry is also very crafty as it describes the current world of poetry as static and flat.
Now comes the question of, why use nature to explain this idea? I think the choice of the bird was done for a couple of reasons. First is the historical relationship birds have with poetry. Finch wanted to illustrate that she could use a trope in a new and inventive way. But more importantly than that I believe the bird is a perfect fit because it functions to illustrate the importance of poetry to her. Without flight a bird is nothing and I believe Finch meant to suggest the same thing about her relationship to poetry. I took this to be a further commentary on the social roles of women at the time. When she is caught up imitating other poets she is no one. It is only when she crafts her own individual style that she can be relevant because not only is she a woman poet but also just strictly a woman. Without poetry her society would think of her as nothing more than a pretty face. Ultimately, Finch’s use of nature here crafts a much stronger argument than any other allegory could have because of the agency which birds have access to when they can fly.
Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes is Thomas Gray’s mock elegy for the dead cat of his friend Horace Walpole. Walpole was quite the luxurious individual and he collected many treasures from around the world. This opulence is mocked in the poem when the cat dies of chasing after a goldfish, emphasis on gold. Though this may just be an artifact of the time, the aabccb rhyme scheme seems to add to the mocking tone. The juxtaposition between the comedic nature of the poem and the tight form only heightens the joke. The poem warns against the desires of the cat and ends with the line “Nor all that glisters gold.” I hadn't known this until writing this post, but the poetry foundations biography on Gray seems to suggest Walpole and him had somewhat of a falling out which they never entirely got over before the writing of this poem. Maybe the mocking of the greed of the poem is tied to some animosity Gray still harbored toward him, although there is no way for us to know this.
The poem makes multiple comparisons between the cat and the female figure. As Hayley pointed out in her post the cat has a "fair round face" (8), “velvety paws” (9), she sports a "coat, that with the tortoise vies," (10), and she has "emerald eyes" (11). Additionally the cat is described as a “presumptuous maid!,” which seems like a bit much to be talking about just a cat (even if cats do seem to do whatever they please.) Though, the line that makes it unquestionably clear he is comparing the cat to women is “What female heart can gold despise?” While the poem is about a female cat chasing a goldfish Gray essentially drops all pretense that he is talking about a cat at this point and slaps us in the face with his allegory.
What’s not initially clear here is why Gray makes his critique of greed about women. Maybe he had recently had some girl issues or maybe he didn’t want to poke too much fun directly at his friend whose cat died. I choose to interpret this poem as a critique of the domestication of the women in the era and how this treatment necessarily lead to the kind of greed Grey is critical of. When women are locked up in the house all day and told their worth is derived from the value of that house of course they would obsess over glistening artifacts, because they are made to think the beauty of their home is tied to their own self-worth. When looking through this lens the use of nature as an allegorical device is entirely necessary. There is no way to discuss the way domestication affects bodies without talking about a domesticated body. That is to say, Grey chooses a natural allegory because they are the only bodies that were subjected to the same level of control that was placed over women. When reading the poem this way not only is this choice of subject necessary but also brilliant.
In Andrew Feld’s poem Cascade Raptor Center: Capture his use of nature isn’t allegorical but rather it exists within the literal world of the poem. The poem follows a boy and his father after the boy shoots an endangered hawk. The hawk serves as sympathetic figure to show the way we deal with grief and how we relate to violence.
In the first section of the poem each line begins with the phrase “he hadn’t meant to hit the bird,” and with each repetition the emphasis shifts. It begins with “meant” and then shifts to “hadn’t” both of which suggest how sure the speaker is that concerned with intent of the action to an increasing degree. Next the word “hit” is emphasized, which suggests the speaker may have come to terms with the fact that the boy had to have been trying to shoot near the bird to hit it in the first place, but holds on to hope that the boy intended to miss the bird. Next the whole line is emphasized which suggests a final attachment to the disbelief of the situation. The speaker really wants to trust that the boy didn’t want to harm the bird. Finally the last repetition has no emphasis and is followed by the question “who cared?” At this point the speaker realizes that intent doesn’t play into the importance of the event and all the really matters is what transpired. This leads into the latter half of the poem which shows the son and father’s agonizing car trip to the raptor preserve.
The bird is so important in the poem the speaker goes as far to suggest “if he’d killed a man we’d all have been more compassionate.” This shows how our relationship with nature is fundamentally different from our relationship with humans in that, human must earn our compassion while animal are granted it without question because they are innocent. Animals in our mind never deserve violence because they cannot do evil, they can only act against the wishes of humanity unknowingly.
Nature is necessary in this poem because we can rationalize the death of a human, but an endangered animals can never be justly killed. This is what creates the grief that permeates the latter half of the poem. Nature here teaches the son, and by proxy the reader, how grief works. Often time there is no reconciliation or closure. Some mistakes are just mistakes with nothing to learn from them but to not repeat them. Without the innocence of the bird the poem doesn’t create the same tension because the father and other adults wouldn’t shame the son in the same way, as they would trust he already felts bad enough. The choice to have nature be harmed is a conscious one and while there is some commentary on nature itself in this poem the crux of it is in how the event reflects on the son and father.
When beginning to write this paper I expected to discuss how anthropocentric all these authors where in choosing to talk about human problems using nature, but after looking back at the semester I’ve discovered that poets choose nature as a tool to drive their themes because we are intimately tied with it. We relate to animals so readily that it allows for poets to discuss ideas in the abstract without becoming boring. Ultimately I think that poets use natural metaphors and references because we are more connected to nature then we may initially assume.
Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/anne-finch
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/thomas-gray
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