Blog Watch: WB on nature poetry

Local Food, Poetry and the Pursuit of Holiness - yearofplenty.

Wendell Berry's commentary on "nature poetry" helps explain some of my perspective. Berry points out that in the world of poetry there are two kinds of nature poetry. He says;

"I will use the term here to refer only to those poets who seem to me to have turned the natural world, not as a source of imagery, but as subject of inspiration...With these (poets) nature was of primary interest; by seeing into its life they sensed the presence of a shaping and sustaining spirit within it. With poets such as Donne or Pope or Shelley the particulars of nature were only of secondary interest insofar as they 'stood for' an abstraction that interested the poet primarily and that he has in mind before he turned to nature for the image." READ MORE ...