Carolyn Merchant‘s 1980 book, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution is, according to Kathryn Aalto, “one of the most important feminist books ever written.” (Writing Wild, p. 102) I am embarrassed to admit I had never heard of it. In her groundbreaking book, Merchant “analyzes environmental history to frame the relationship between the natural world and humanity, particularly gender and the environment.” (Writing Wild, p. 103) She also helps give rise to the idea of ecofeminism, or “a feminist approach to understanding ecology.”
Merchant’s ideas are new to me, so I needed a poetic form that could help me distill them and gain some deeper understanding. I find that acrostics sometimes give me a vocabulary for a topic and get the words flowing, especially if its a topic I don’t know a lot about. This seemed like a good place to start. And because it’s the end of a long week, it also seemed like a good place to stop for now.
Ecofeminism
Earth, mother to all,
Cradles and nurtures the
Organic cosmos,
Fuels the vital forces of
Ensouled beings.
Magical traditions are
Inextricably linked, a vast symbiotic
Network, millenia in the making.
Its equilibrium has been disrupted, no longer
Sustainable, thanks to
Mechanization and greed.
Draft, © 2021, Catherine Flynn
Previous Writing Wild posts:
Day 1: Dorothy Wordsworth
Day 2: Susan Fenimore Cooper
Day 3: Gene Stratton-Porter
Day 4: Mary Austin
Day 5: Vita Sackville-West
Day 6: Nan Shepherd
Day 7: Rachel Carson
Day 8: Mary Oliver
Please be sure to visit Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference for the Poetry Friday Roundup!
Reading to the Core 