For literary equivalents of the west coast fires, look to “The Aeneid” and to Vasily Grossman’s “Life and Fate.”
Tag Archives: climate change
Apocalyptic Fire Ravages the Nation
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Aeneid, California wildfires, extreme weather, Life and Fate, Oregon wildfires, Vasily Grossman, Virgil Comments closed
Without Nature, No Language for Soul
In an age when we are exhausted by apocalyptic rhetoric, Richard Wilbur provides a poem that remind us of how much we owe to natural beauty.
To Fight Climate Change, Plant Gardens
Wendell Berry asserts that growing and maintaining gardens is an antidote to climate change.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Speech to the Garden Club of America", gardens, Wendell Berry Comments closed
The World Will End in Fire AND Ice
When Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice,” it now appears (judging by Australia and Greenland) that everyone is right.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Fire and Ice", Australian wildfires, C. S. Lewis, Homer, Iliad, Last Battle, Robert Frost Comments closed
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nativity
This playful Scott Bates environmental poem looks at the nativity story and observes that we are in desperate need of a repetition.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Christmas, Environmental destruction, Scott Bates, syncretism Comments closed
Winter’s Assyrian Invasion
Monday When the polar vortex descended on the United States last week, the opening lines from Lord Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib” came to mind. While I’d memorized the stanza in high school to learn anapestic meter (short-short-long), it captures the emotional force of extreme weather events. (Another Byron poem that does so is “Darkness”) […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Destruction of Senacherib", extreme weather events, Lord Byron, polar vortex Comments closed
Byron’s Climate Change Nightmare
Wednesday News about climate change grows grimmer by the month, with the latest governmental reports predicting that extreme weather events will kill thousands while devastating national economies. I therefore share today a 19th century climate change poem although, in this instance, the climate grows colder rather than warmer. In 1816 the world experienced “the year without […]
