Ellen Bass by Landon Clark
WHO IS ELLEN BASS:
Ellen Bass​ is an American poet born in Philadelphia, PA in 1947. She later grew up in Pleasantville, NJ, and she now lives in Santa Cruz, CA. She attended Goucher College and graduated magna cum laude in 1968 with her bachelor’s degree. She then sought her master’s degree at Boston University, graduating in 1970. She has been teaching poetry in Santa Cruz since 1974. In 2017, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Many of her poems have been included in journals and anthologies, with some of her works being found in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and The Ecopoetry Anthology. She is an award winning poet and novelist whose works have been highly regarded for their deep insight and creative perspectives. Her poems "Birdsong from My Patio", "The Big Picture", and "Saturn's Rings" will be focused on in this piece for their Anthropocene qualities.
WHAT IS THE ANTHROPOCENE:
The broad answer to this question is as follows: the Anthropocene is the epoch in which humans have emerged as the most dominant environmental threat to this world. While this definition is important to keep in mind, it does not give a reason to dive deeper into this issue, it only suggests something that is not even universally accepted (this being the concept that humans are doing irreversible damage to the earth). A better way to define the Anthropocene would be to tie in facts, evidence, and scientific data that shows how the earth has changed in recent times without pushing any sort of political agenda or personal beliefs. With this in mind, it is essential that we incorporate the Great Acceleration into our definition of Anthropocene.Great Acceleration - The rapid negative changes of Earth's environment coinciding with the swift development of new technologies circa 1950.
The Great Acceleration is important because it is rooted in data. The foundation of the Great Acceleration itself is based on the environmental harms caused by nuclear advancements, global consumerism, and a drastic increase in non-renewable energy consumption and thus pollution. While one could make the argument, and not be off-base, that humans had a significant impact on the global environment even with the introduction of horticulture millenniums ago, this impact is negligible compared to the impact that has been caused just in the past century. The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme released some data that shows sociocultural trends compared with environmental trends. This data can be seen in the graph below as well as on the IGBP website found here.HOW CAN POETRY BE ANTHROPOCENE ART:
Poetry is typically a concise and elegant medium of art. It is not often that the reader finds him/herself re-reading page long descriptions of a scene that is about to unfold. Instead, the reader is quickly immersed in a world created by the author, and just as quickly pulled back to reality. The beauty in poetry is that it is just as much on the reader as it is on the author to make something out of the text. This is an important feature because it means authors can get their point across without having to try to appeal to one perspective; they can simply be as general as they would like. This ties in perfectly with the previously mentioned description of the Anthropocene, as it is not something that should be forced on others, but rather something others should conclude themselves. Poetry thus becomes a more than ideal art form for engaging members of all different walks of life with the topic of the Anthropocene, as long as the reader is willing to expand his/her mind.BASS AND THE ANTHROPOCENE:
The important question to be answered here is, how does Bass use her poetry to effectively and efficiently show a need for change in the way humans treat the earth without coming off as biased. To answer this question, it is key to analyze her writing style as well as her subject choices. In her writings, Bass tends to use stark contrasts to compare the beauty of nature to the filth and disgust caused by humankind. This contrast is a subtle, but not ignorable, depiction of the way humans have damaged the environment in recent years. While the reader of her poems may be tempted to focus on other nuances of her poems, it is almost impossible not to be drawn back to why she uses text such as "...And their porous, thin-shelled eggs, bluish or milky or speckled, lying doomed in each intricate nest." This excerpt comes from "Birdsong from My Patio" and is just one example, not necessarily tied to any specific Anthropocene definitions, that shows her use of human vs. nature contrast. While this specific excerpt shows her use of contrast, other quotes need to be analyzed to show a deeper connection to the Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration specifically. The whole text is found bellow:"Birdsong from My Patio":
I’ve never heard this much song,
trills pure as crystal bells,
but not like bells: alive, small rushes
of air from the tiny plush lungs
of birds tucked in among the stiff
leaves of the olive and almond,
the lemon with its hard green studs.
As the sun slides down newborn
from thick-muscled clouds
their glittering voices catch the light
like bits of twirling aluminum.
I picture their wrinkled feet
curled around thin branches,
absorbing pesticide.
I see them preening, tainted
feathers sliding through their glossy
beaks, over their leathery tongues.
They’re feeding on contaminated insects,
wild seeds glistening with acid rain.
And their porous, thin-shelled eggs,
bluish or milky or speckled,
lying doomed in each
intricate nest. Everything
is drenched with loss:
the wood thrush and starling,
the unripe fruit of the lemon tree.
With all that’s been ruined
these songs impale the air
with their sharp, insistent needles.
- Human caused/related keywords: twirling bits of aluminum, pesticides, tainted feathers, contaminated, acid rain, doomed, drenched with loss, ruined
- Nature related keywords: tiny plush lungs, glittering voices, wild seeds glistening, intricate nest, sharp insistent needles*
*This phrase uses a harsher tone, like much of the human-related phrases use, and it is used in a very similar way. It shows that the author sees the birdsong as a cause of guilt and as a reminder of the damages done to the environment by humans.
A DEEPER LOOK:
One can see clearly the use of contrasting literary terms to denote a sense of "good" and "bad" in terms of nature and human activity, but that does not necessarily tie directly into the idea of the Great Acceleration. To make that connection, we must look at the human keywords used above. These words are relative to recent technologies, such as the increase in the use of pesticides, increase in acid rain, and the widespread availability of resources like aluminum.In 2012, the EPA estimated that 3.58 million tons of aluminum were produced for consumer goods, and 2.87 million tons were not recycled. This means that almost all of the aluminum used for cans, foil, or even kitchenware that was thrown away ended up in a landfill or discarded of in other environmentally hazardous ways. This goes to show that Bass is not off base by incorporating the poor handling of trash into her poem. She also mentions how the plants the birds are surrounded with are covered in pesticides, which are known to be a detriment to the environment. The ability for pesticides to kill insects can, unfortunately, carry over to other animals including birds, fish, non-targeted plants, and beneficial insects. The alarming fact about pesticides is that they are actually being used and produced at a steadily increasing rate, which means that there is a greater potential for the death of these animals which would effectively create a massive shift in the earth's ecosystem. Finally, Bass brings up acid rain in a way that makes it seem like it is not even something to worry about. However, acid rain is something to worry about because it causes water to absorb aluminum from the ground (which ties into the previous point on aluminum) and makes the water toxic for many different aquatic lifeforms both large and small. It is for reasons like these that Bass is an effective Anthropocene artist, as she is able to suggest these ideas without bringing up any organizations or political groups etc. to solve them. The reader is then able to approach these ideas with an unbiased view, as he/she is not told what to think about them, only that they have damaged this birds ecosystem.
