Exalting Nature

Paper Summary:

This paper contends that poets vary in their views on nature. The paper discusses how Stevie Smith in the poem "Alone in the Woods" uses anger to convey man's destruction of nature and how Margaret Walker in her piece "My Mississippi Spring" conveys nature as if it were the most beautiful thing they have ever experienced or beyond carnal experience. The paper explains how other poets choose to personify it or give it some type of unimaginable quality or symbolic meaning. The poets discussed in the paper (Stevie Smith, Margaret Walker, Alexander Pope, 'Abd Allah ibn al-Simak and Pat Lowther) tend to all mean for the better of nature but all use different techniques. The paper explores how the poets use different themes such as anger and different techniques such as diction or personification, but all arrive at the main idea of exalting nature.

From the Paper:

"Stevie Smith in the poem Alone in the Woods personifies the woods "Nature has taught her creatures to hate" (line 3). By personifying the woods she can now illustrate anger or "bitter hostility with words using the woods as the one angry at the human race. "As the sap paints the trees a violent green so rises the wrath of Natures creatures At man" (lines 4, 5, & 6). Further along Smith continues fortifying the his technique and idea on lines eleven through eighteen "Nature is sick at man, Sick at his fuss and fume, Sick at his agonies, Sick at his gaudy mind, That drives his body, Ever more quickly, More and more, in the wrong direction" (lines 11-18). Smith uses short lines and repetition which reaffirms his angry view on mans destruction of nature. On the other hand poets like Alexander Pope in his work An Essay on Man (epistle 1) display or convey anger but not from nature, he puts comes out and openly and describes man. Pope gives the idea that man is very possessive, Pope uses six possessive pronouns such as "Tis for mine...for me"(Pope 1-10). "

More papers on Exalting Nature:

• Essay # 32899 : " Nature's Demise in the Poetry of Canada"
• Essay # 57044 : "Myths"
• Analytical Essay # 4252 : "Michele Caravaggio"

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