To me, all good poetry is nature poetry; I’m not in the habit of sorting either the poems I read or the poems I write by subject matter. Some poets who treat nature as an ideological touchstone or an excuse for pseudo-mystical rambling do leave me cold, as do poets who — like many of the supposedly great English poets of the 18th century and before — rarely admit an unconventional natural image into their work, to say nothing of a named species. I agree that it’s difficult to write convincing poems about non-human subjects, having failed so many times in that regard myself. But it’s also rare that I write anything about plants or animals without at least alluding to “this monstrous world” in which we all, rural and urban alike, are complicit in. And of all the poets I admire who write with integrity about the natural world, I can’t think of any who “dismiss” the concerns of humanity, as Simic implies.

@ Via Negativa