Anne Waldman: “The air was thick with a bass chorus” I’ve joked of late about how it’s the slime molds who will inherit the earth—post-Anthropocene (the geological epoch we’re in which some think should replace “Holocene,” as we’re in an age when the planet does not feel the interfering greedy hand of Man). And we will have a “slime mold poetics” with a lot of slurping and smacking, like the “slap and plop” Seamus Heaney invokes in his wonderful “Death of a Naturalist,” which comes to mind often in these urgent ecological times. And which I’ve enjoyed reading aloud to students. His poem is a great antidote to sentimental “nature poetry” and offers a palpable sense of that very specific visceral, scary experience and process with its lush primordial science and sound, from “flax-dam festered in the heart of the townland” to the “thick slobber of frogspawn.” And the threat of the “great slime kings…gathered for vengeance” who might clutch the poet’s hand as he tries to escape and he would be gone forever into that ooze of flax rot, huge sods and “fields rank with cowdung.” The death of a poet is always hard and we mourn that vocal life and unique presence that was so attuned to the vibrant particulars of this world, as Seamus Heaney was—with his special wit and generosity. And we will always have the poems that continue to reverberate deeply as this one does for me. - See more at: poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23683?utm_source=September:+Back+to+School&utm_campaign=september_update&utm_medium=email#sthash.jGUbBEc1.dpuf
Posted on: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 12:55:11 +0000