Reverence for Nature: Trees in the Poetry of W.S. Merwin and Others

Abstract

This study understands ecopoetry as an effort to reverse the deadening impact of ordinary language on our lives. Ecopoetry awakens our senses; it thereby answers the call made by ecologist and philosopher David Abram to renew the spiritual connection between ourselves and the rest of the earth. Reading poems that explore this sacred relationship between ourselves and the earth calls us to recognize that “the myriad things around us have their own active agency, their own active influence upon our lives and our thoughts (and also, of course, upon one another).” Among nonhuman nature, trees are particularly easy to overlook or objectify because they appear to be static and without consciousness. Many people see them only insofar as they interfere with or serve our narrow self-interests, by either blocking a view, being an inconvenience, or serving as a source of oxygen, lumber, or income. By contrast, ecopoets make a sacred space between trees and themselves, a space in which they listen with empathy to what trees are communicating. Poets’ capacity for wonder, attunement to their senses, willingness to listen, and openness to surprise enable them to give voice to trees in a respectful, mutual way. In many cases, representations of trees in poems by Giacomo Leopardi, W.S. Merwin, Wendell Berry, and Mary Oliver are not mere images; they offer a path, by way of the senses, to transcendence and spiritual renewal.