If you two are done bickering with each other, I think most Brits would realize that a Scotsman holds the crown of “greenest” writer from the 18th and 19th centuries. I may be best known for taking the songs of my countrymen and making them famous throughout the world. Have either of you heard of “Auld Lang Syne”? I’m guessing you have. But I also think I had the knack of describing the everyday occurrences in the natural world with elegant poetic language. Check out my poem, “To a Mouse”, and see how I describe farm life and the distress caused to a mouse. My narrator even sympathizes with the mouse: "thy poor, earth-born companion, / An’ fellow mortal!” (Burns 135, ll. 11-12). I am also able to tie the destructive effects of the human race to environmental degradation. “I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion / Has broken Nature’s social union” (Burns 135, ll. 7-8). Sure, I am only talking about a mouse nest, but what if I made this an allusion to larger environmental issues? For example, enclosure was starting to take place at this time, and it was one of the many forerunners to the Industrial Revolution. And you all know what effects on the environment happened during and after the Industrial Revolution.
Now I know some of my language is a little difficult to follow, so watch this video and listen to a native Scot read my “To a Mouse” poem.
The images will also help you get the meaning, although if I had created this video, I would have left out the symbolism with the World Trade Center. I would have rather seen my line “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men” (Burns 136, l. 39) be more of a reference to Steinbeck’s novel. But that’s just me opinion.
Last, but not least, if you agree that I am the greenest writer, I may invite ye all to an official Robert Burns supper. What do ya say?
1 comment:
I know I should probably side with one of the Wordsworths, but I'm afraid my heart lies with Robbie Burns in this competition.
Although Dorothy and William describe nature so vividly and capture the spontaneous outflow of emotion it inspires in them, there is something terribly connected about Burns' poetry.
It might in fact be because he comes from a laboring background. I sense that he knows land as a farmer knows land, as a man who has worked with it, in it, has absorbed it into his very soul. Nature is not simply a beautiful thing that inspires; to him it is provider and punisher, fluid yet fixed.
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