Neo-Post-Naturalists

In Gary Snyder’s book, Danger on the Peaks, the deconstruction of Nature with a capitol N may be nigh complete. Airports, McDonald’s, Denny’s and Motel 6 are not separate from the birds and bees. They may be an ironic inclusion, but they are included, not in something called Nature but in the poet’s total experience. This isn’t new to Snyder who, after all, did engaging bio-regional portraits of New York and Los Angeles. Neither was it new to William Stafford who called himself, his car, a dead doe and an unborn fawn “our group.” Post-Humanist, Post-Colonialist, Post-Structuralist—things get Poster every day out here in the hyperspace of no-nature, or is it now Post-hyperspace?

When we dispense with the Confessional’s guilt, suddenly the barriers start to fall. Robert Lowell’s skunk loses its ironic simplicity. Lowell’s in hell; the skunk’s eating sour cream. And? Sylvia Plath’s daddy’s big toe looks like a seal. And? I’m afraid those tired old Wordsworthians can kiss the still sad music of humanity goodbye—just ask the grizzly trying to rub her radio collar off on a tree.

BUT there’s always Mary Oliver. She still manages to trudge “away from it all” and send the doe into a state of shock when she smells her faun where Mary’s been petting it. And Mary still comes up short in trying to find the right words for greeting a swan. I mean, what if Ronald McDonald were to run out of the woods behind her squeezing an Aflac duck? Would the swan know the difference? Science says the DNA’s pretty much the same.

A human writing a Nature poem is about as credible—and likely, as a WASP extolling the morality of Post-Colonial literature—to get tenure, promotion or a raise. I guess eventually that means we’re all in this together—and what’s wrong with that? It’s only natural.