There are two types of nature poets: those who use nature to comfort, and those who use it to scare. Nature can do both.
Nature poets must realize that we—the humans, the poets—don’t call the shots. Nature does.
We always think of Ted Hughes when we think of a nature poet who makes nature scary.
As far as the other kind of nature poet, we usually think of Thoreau, who has a certain poetry in his diaries, or, of course, Wordsworth.
Love nature, you silly humans, is what the typical bombastic, tedious, boring, sentimental nature poet does, and, if we equate God and nature, which we can easily do, we include the priests.
Wordsworth is duller than Byron, Shelley, and Keats, because this is what he does sometimes.
Shakespeare can’t be called a nature poet; in the Sonnets, Shakespeare says, Since I love you, respect nature.
According to Shakespeare, nature does two things: it kills and it reproduces. Nature is not a comfort to Shakespeare, but a prod.
Nature, for the old priests, and the old poets who write of death, is a prod of God.
For nature poets like Mary Oliver, nature is God, our comfort and salvation.
Mary Oliver takes on the role for herself of what she perceives nature to be, a very kind mother, and she comforts us with these words:
You do not have to be good.
The other poet in this contest, Charles Hayes, loves nature, too; he published a book on saving the Hudson river.
But we were just looking for good lines of poetry for March Madness, and we liked this by Charles Hayes for its compression and drama:
Her sweaty driver knows his load his fair.
It has a certain chivalrous pathos that we like.
It doesn’t have a moral.
File it under, “You don’t have to be good.”
Good versus fair.
Now that’s a contest.
