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Zefuyn
Advanced Member
Username: zefuyn

Post Number: 1045
Registered: 12-2006
Posted on Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 7:08 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102795472


"If poems touch our full humanness, can they quicken awareness and bolster respect for this ravaged resilient earth we live on?" writes John Felstiner in Can Poetry Save the Earth? Stanford News Service



Check out 8 year old El'Jay Johnson's poem, he's got the right idea...

Melanie
Melanie G. Firth, 2009

The circle is the purpose of the line, M. Insingel
Dan Tompsett
Intermediate Member
Username: db_tompsett

Post Number: 486
Registered: 07-2007
Posted on Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 7:59 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

No. Poetry can't save the earth. But here is what might be my favorite nature poem:

Underwater Autumn
by Richard Hugo

Now the summer perch flips twice and glides
a lateral fathom at the first cold rain,
the surface near to silver from a frosty hill.
Along the weed and grain of log he slides his tail.

Nervously the trout (his stream-toned heart
locked in the lake, his poise and nerve disgraced)
above the stirring catfish, curves in bluegill dreams
and curves beyond the sudden thrust of bass.

Surface calm and calm act mask the detonating fear,
the moving crayfish claw, the stare
of sunfish hovering above the cloud-stained sand,
a sucker nudging cans, the grinning maskinonge.

How do carp resolve the eel and terror here?
They face so many times this brown-ribbed fall of leaves
predicting weather foreign as a shark or prawn
and floating still above them in the paling sun.
"People who believe a lot of crap are better off." Charles Bukowski