Em-Circularity
I write the content of my own eco-concept from the insect world, and decide the name of the eco-concept—Em-Circularity. And I choose bees to be the study object. To start creating the content, we first talk about how art shows their representations of natural worlds. The natural world covers a wider area on this planet. We usually realize the important role that nature’s play is to bring colour, fresh air and a comfortable living environment. Hence, it is not easy to just use words to tell and summarize this concept. But we still find that there are many artists or many writers that try their best to use their art to construct their own representations of the natural world. I choose John Clare’s poem “Wild Bees” to show his representation of the natural world.
At the start of the poem, the writer makes a metaphor for comparing bees to the summer’s children. Clare writes that “These children of the sun which summer brings; And glad the cotters’ quiet toils again (line1, 4).” The first sentence means that these children appear by the sun. In fact, he wants to tell readers about bees that are usually born in the summer. Clare cleverly uses this metaphor that gives the connection between bees and summer. And through doing some research, some authorities prove that the high temperature is more suitable to make bees alive and born. Bees can have the longest being in the summer, and the summer is their most active season at work. At the same time, it is a good time to get ready for birth to new bees again. These actions make a cycle system that can also correspond to my topic—circularity. After that, he focuses on talking about the word “the cotters”. The word “cotter” is not from English, it is from the German or Scots term and is used for a peasant farmer. It exactly corresponds to Clare’s other identity. Clare is from the working class, and he is also the son of farm labour. He had a rural childhood in nature. This special experience that supports him can use his writing to show audiences about his representation of the natural worlds. In the poem, he said he saw many farmers working, but his narrative objects are not farmers. These farmers’ images are set off to emphasis the main characters—bees. These wild bees also work for their lives, work for their work, they are the same as the farmers, but still ignored by humans. Hence, audiences can feel the cycle that bees usually prepared for the next descendant to do the same work—collect honey. But the other important thing that I choose to study bees is that wild bees usually write down their histories about leaving their own contribution and figures in this busy summer. In order to demonstrate this idea, the writer uses environmental descriptions that show readers a poetic picture of bees with flowers creating nature. “Where tawny white and red flush clover buds; Shine bonnily and bean fields blossom ripe; Shed dainty perfumes and give honey food; To these sweet poets of the summer fields (Clare, line 17-20).” Clare starts the beautiful flower description. There are many different kinds of flower blossoms, hence readers can imagine a scene about the bees collecting their honey in this flower field. And he mentions a special character-- the sweet poets. The poets can be pointed out to the summer or nature, even the busy person-- bees. Through observation, Clare finally finds that only nature can create this kind of peace and ideal sight of nature with animals. Therefore，he uses his poem to show audiences his ideal nature world, flowers, animals --bees, even himself—human.
On the other hand, the writer shows three different kinds of bees’ series by writing detailed colour descriptions. The first one is “the white-nosed bee”, the second one is “the black and yellow”, the last one is “in livery dress half sables and half red”. These three different bees show what level of knowledge that the writer knew before. He may ask some authorities to help or has had the experience of studying bees’ research. It still can show his respect for insects and his respect for dealing in the same ways as any other natural world object. He knows that he has the responsibility of correcting the characteristics of these three bees for audiences. At the same time, he uses these details to praise nature about the diversity of species. In addition, the writer usually uses auditory images to show audiences his impression of bees. It is a kind of technique that can also make audiences quickly jump into the scene and get the same thoughts as the writer and feel the natural world’s charm. Clare writes that “bores its little hole in mortared walls and pipes its symphonies; Right earlily a-morn do pipe and play; And aye so fond they of their singing seem that in their holes abed at close of day (line5, 10, 12, 13).” The writer first uses the object pipe and uses pipe sounds to describe bees’ sounds. From the morning, they like humans that pipe it to call labour coming to work. It also corresponds to the time that bees work for their busy day, they collect the honey as workers work for their life. It reflects that the writer also uses bees related to the human world. And the place that all have this sound is to show they are moving, they are working, they are communicating. Because the summer is a season that they have the longest being that can work. Hence, it also illustrates bees’ sound constructs many parts of the summer. In addition, through reading this poem, the writer uses more rhymes that make this poem more interesting. Most of the sentences’ endings have the rhyme technique. For example, “seem, dream”; “along, song”; “wing, spring”; “hole, coal”. The writer ingeniously uses perfect rhymes and weak rhymes to increase the rhythm sensation of reading this poem. This poem is not really short, hence when reading this poem, a little bit of rhyme can give audiences a smooth and fascinating feeling. In brief, this poem that the writer uses his own writing style to show insect world—bees. And through analysing the poem, audiences can feel the nature world’ diversity and variability, and closely feel and like the cycle of the bees’ life.
All in all, this poem can be a good start for my own eco-concept—Em-Circularity, bees. This poem gives me more ideas about how the writer creates the content, how he gets the responsibility to show audiences his knowledge. And he tries his best to use the language to show audiences his representation of the natural worlds. The natural world is wider, but we can focus on a part to study and try using our own article or text to construct knowledge.
Reference:
- Clare, John. “Wild Bees.” 1820. Poeticous, https://www.poeticous.com/john-clare/wild-bees?locale=en.