The Poets Know It: Art and Change Go Hand in Hand

Pulitzer prize winning poet Mary Oliver got her start in the woods, fiddling with miniature twig and grass huts. In the forest surrounding her childhood home in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, hands muddied and hair no doubt strewn with leaves and sticks, Oliver encountered her beloved Mother Nature and wrote her very first poems. It was in these woods that Oliver discovered a lifelong love.

Across time immemorial, humble moments in connection with nature, like that of child Oliver in an Ohioan forest, have inspired impassioned artwork. From ancient China to the streets of Harlem, New York, poets across the globe have centered landscape, water, and flora and fauna in their writings. For instance, Wang Wei (701-761 C.E.) transformed tranquil Chinese landscapes into poems that resonated beyond the page. Langston Hughes (1901-1967 C.E.) wrote of rivers older than the blood in human veins, and his soul which had “grown deep like rivers.” Both found balance and expression in nature.

In a world harried by deforestation, fossil fuel giants, and man-made droughts and famines, it’s important to find moments of quietude to recalibrate, especially in stoic forests, rivers, and bright meadows. Like Oliver, let us sink into the surrounding landscape to escape our difficult earthly homes. That’s why for National Poetry Month, I’d like to invite you to explore the little occurrences of nature in poetry, and step for a moment onto the thin membrane separating humans from our brother animals.

Romanticizing Nature with the Romantics

What we know today as environmentalism was produced by Romanticism. Developed as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, Romantics believed science cleft a great divide between humankind and the natural world. They viewed nature as sacred and uplifting rather than something to be wielded for human interest. Nature needed to be preserved, not degraded. Artists and poets like Wordsworth communicated the awesome beauty of the natural world to their audiences in the hopes of offering an alternative to ordered Enlightenment thought.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was a foundational Romantic English poet concerned about human relationships with nature. He spent his childhood in a rural paradise along the Derwent River in Derbyshire, England which featured prominently in passages in his poetry book The Prelude. Wordsworth believed the “dreary intercourse of daily life” in urban areas dampened efforts to elevate the mind, as poets attempt to do in their art. He believed, however, that nature could prevail over superficial city life.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) acted as Wordsworth’s sometimes partner in crime. The pair co-wrote the book Lyrical Ballads together and often traveled together, from a summer’s tour of Scotland to a brutal winter snowed-in in Germany. Coleridge and Wordsworth, both fascinated by nature, cemented the burgeoning Romantic movement in history. And Coleridge, like Wordsworth, left wonderful, nature-centered poems behind for generations to come:

Transcending Society with the Transcendentalists

Coinciding with the end of the Romantic movement, the Transcendental movement centered nature and the individual. Famous transcendentalists included writers and philosophers like David Henry Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Amos Bronson Alcott. They urged people against blindly conforming to society, pointing instead towards finding “an original relation to the universe.”

For both Emerson and Thoreau, this meant spending time alone in nature and with their writings. Near the tailend of the movement, many transcendentalists were engaged in social experiments and founded alternative nature-centered lifestyles and societies like Fruitlands, Brook Farm, and Thoreau’s cabin in Walden. Brook Farm, the most famous of the three, was a utopian experiment that lasted only six and a half years. Though the community’s population grew and its school drew prominent New Englanders’ children, shaky finances eventually led the community to close its gates.

Transcendentalists’ close relationships with nature and individualism over social conformity also bore powerful social critiques. They spurned the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, the ongoing war with Mexico, and above all, American slavery. Emerson wrote a scathing critique of the treatment of Native Americans to President Martin Van Buren in 1838. He had this to say of the trail of tears:

Poetry Still Packs a Punch Today

Drawing on both the Romantic and Transcendental traditions, poets of today’s era have combined a deep appreciation for nature with urgent warnings on social issues — namely, the climate crisis. In their ballads for nature, from Oliver’s hymn-like poem “When I Am Among The Trees” to Ada Límon’s poetry book You Are Here, writers across the world still find solace, peace, and hope in their natural environments.

Environmental crises such as floods, drought, increasingly frequent natural disasters, and polluted air and water make those still beautiful nooks of nature all the more precious. Still, poets are critical witnesses with powerful voices tuned to cry out as the environment erodes. Poets like Joan Naviyuk Kane, who contend daily with environmental, social, and political threats to her homeland in the Arctic, confront these threats directly in their work:

Join Other Artists in the Fight for Mother Earth

Art expresses a wide range of emotions that might otherwise be difficult for someone to voice. Whether through painting, sketching, sculpting, writing, or poetry, I believe we all have a gift to share with the world — and for a good cause. With enough love and encouragement, the poet inside you can awaken in defense of the Earth too.

If Kane or Oliver or Frost’s passionate words moved you, I invite you to sign up to be an Artist for the Earth. Art builds community and community powers change. Combine environmental art with social and political advocacy in your preferred artform and share it with those around you. The time to act is now, and what more powerful way to inspire other people’s hearts to change the world than through the lyrical stanzas of poetry.

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