The poem “State of the Planet” by Robert Hass was a very refreshing piece to read for myself. Although I did find it to be a little bit difficult to understand Hass’s choice of wording. There was one quote that stood out to me on the first page that I wanted to examine a little bit more. “Poetry should be able to comprehend the earth. To set aside from time to time it’s natural idioms of ardor and revulsion, and say, in a style as sober As the Latin of Lucretius, who reported to Venus On the state of things two thousand years ago- “It’s your doing that under the wheeling constellations of the sky,” he wrote, “all nature teems with life-“ Something of the earth beyond our human dramas.”
I understood the beginning of this poem; what I took from it was, poetry should be able to show and express who the world is and in order to do that, we as the writer needs to understand the earth and its whole. All of nature is connected with who we are and life itself. I believe it seems to be a circle of life with nature and expressing it through poetry or whatever other means. I did have a difficult time understanding the rest of the quote when it talked about “It’s your doing that under the wheeling constellations of the sky, all nature teems with life.” So I became unclear of what Hass was trying to get at in this line. Was he trying to say that nature is connected with “life” like how I explained earlier in my blog, or was he trying to say that nature is “life.” I can agree with either meaning, I believe that nature is connected with life and also I believe nature is life!
I like the way that you wrestle with a difficult line here. I'm not completely sure what it means myself. I do wish that you had more here though. The post left me wanting to see what else you could get out of it, what else you had to say or could come up with to say.
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