Song of the Earth: Nature and Literature

 by Phoebe Clark

Song of the Earth is an eco-critical book that concerns itself with the new age of technology, and where poetry fits into it, as well as eco literature and many other questions. I won’t claim to have understood every word of the book but at the very least it poses some thought-provoking questions. Such as, does the writer have the capacity to restore the earth?, are humans a part of nature or apart from nature? And does the imagine health of the past, and the romanticism of nature, mean the sickness of the present? To name a few.

One fascinating tangent the book dives into is the complete separation of nature, the minute we concern ourselves with nature or touch it in the most minute ways, it is no longer nature in its full glory. We are also separated from nature the minute we use language as a means of communication, as opposed to birdsong or body language. As humans, we only deem ‘aesthetic’ landscapes useful, but in fact, the ugliest landscapes such as bogs and undergrowth are the most vital for the ecosystem. Bate also argued that an organism only has true meaning and value when in its proper home and therefore houseplants lose their value and identity when simply used as decoration.

It might seem this eco-critical book is concerned with biology but Jonathan Bate consistently draws his ideas from literature and poetry from history and modern-day, routing his statements in academia and therefore using sufficient justification to back them up. There is a far wider plethora of statements and justifications that the author makes, which might persuade you to give it a read.

See Phoebe Clark's poem, 'State of Nature' here.