Nature is. That is a complete sentence; nature exists. Further, nature does not tell us why it exists. It is a prerequisite for life, an unrelenting force, and an ineffable beauty. Without nature, there would be no man. Nature does not have to stoop so low as justifying its existence to we impermanent leeches, fattening ourselves with its bounty.
We at this journal have no such power, and therefore no such privilege. Hello! My name is Cory Willingham, and I am the new editor of Hawk and Whippoorwill. H&W is a simple journal with a simple goal: to provide exposure to figures concerned with the ever-relevant themes of "man and nature." In this post, I will make a first sally at justifying our existence.
It is becoming increasingly commonplace to say, "Our planet is not dying, we are killing it." This is a fair statement, but it perhaps distracts from the point with a sardonic rhetorical flourish-- our planet is dying, and we are killing it. I will not say that it is important "now more than ever" to be concerned with nature, but I will say that it is as important as ever. I was at a conference about a month ago, and one of the speakers (a brilliant professor of classics whose name I have unfortunately forgotten!) bemoaned the fact that we as a species have become more distant from nature, and as such we read nature poetry differently. The specific point was that we no longer immediately recognize the smell of donkey urine, but we shouldn't get bogged down in details. The speaker's point was much deeper than his casual tangent would suggest: we, as a species, simply don't think about nature as much as we used to. This is due in large part, of course, to wild urbanization, but there is another point which deserves scrutiny. We are, generally, separated from the world around us by a layer or two. I refer here to the ubiquitous presence of technology.
I don't mean to attack technology; I'm typing this post on a laptop which has provided me untold hours of entertainment, and using the Internet, a resource which has provided me with truly fantastic knowledge. My cell phone keeps me in touch with my friends across the world. Central air is cool. But the growth of technology, and specifically of screen-having-devices, has led to a decline in our collective connectedness with nature. While we know more, we have experienced less. I have seen marvelous rainforests, but I have not stood in their majesty. I have seen the peaks of tall mountains, but I have not breathed their thin air. I am content in my perceptions, erroneously believing them to be suitable replacements for experiences; because of them, I do not think about the natural world around me as much as I should. I do not give it the reverence it deserves
Beyond the obvious complaint that we mostly only touch nature to kill it, there is another complaint which ought to be addressed. So much great poetry has been written because of nature! Wordsworth, Hesiod, Vergil, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Akbar, Stallings, Bos-- these myriad poets have made art inspired by the natural world. But today, nature poetry is hardly the norm. We have poems of loss, of love, of atomism, of fear, and those poetic themes are all intensely valuable. Just as I don't mean to attack technology, I certainly don't mean to devalue non-nature-poems.
The problem is thus: nature is dying around us, and our nature poetry is waning as well. One or the other of these situations may be acceptable, but the presence of both at once presents an alarming concern. We don't think about nature as much anymore, and we don't write about nature as much anymore, and because we don't write about it as much, we don't think about it as much, and because we don't think about it as much, we don't write about it as much, et cetera ad perpetuum. We can't live inside our urban heat domes and leave our progenitor to wither away. Nature is like Tinkerbell. If we don't keep her in our thoughts, she dies. (I've never seen Peter Pan. Isn't that how it goes?)
So, I present to you: Hawk and Whippoorwill. A revitalized and reorganized magazine of nature poetry, designed to give people who write about nature or our role in it an opportunity to remind the rest of us, we world-weary urbanists, to call our mom. Let's get started.
We at this journal have no such power, and therefore no such privilege. Hello! My name is Cory Willingham, and I am the new editor of Hawk and Whippoorwill. H&W is a simple journal with a simple goal: to provide exposure to figures concerned with the ever-relevant themes of "man and nature." In this post, I will make a first sally at justifying our existence.
It is becoming increasingly commonplace to say, "Our planet is not dying, we are killing it." This is a fair statement, but it perhaps distracts from the point with a sardonic rhetorical flourish-- our planet is dying, and we are killing it. I will not say that it is important "now more than ever" to be concerned with nature, but I will say that it is as important as ever. I was at a conference about a month ago, and one of the speakers (a brilliant professor of classics whose name I have unfortunately forgotten!) bemoaned the fact that we as a species have become more distant from nature, and as such we read nature poetry differently. The specific point was that we no longer immediately recognize the smell of donkey urine, but we shouldn't get bogged down in details. The speaker's point was much deeper than his casual tangent would suggest: we, as a species, simply don't think about nature as much as we used to. This is due in large part, of course, to wild urbanization, but there is another point which deserves scrutiny. We are, generally, separated from the world around us by a layer or two. I refer here to the ubiquitous presence of technology.
I don't mean to attack technology; I'm typing this post on a laptop which has provided me untold hours of entertainment, and using the Internet, a resource which has provided me with truly fantastic knowledge. My cell phone keeps me in touch with my friends across the world. Central air is cool. But the growth of technology, and specifically of screen-having-devices, has led to a decline in our collective connectedness with nature. While we know more, we have experienced less. I have seen marvelous rainforests, but I have not stood in their majesty. I have seen the peaks of tall mountains, but I have not breathed their thin air. I am content in my perceptions, erroneously believing them to be suitable replacements for experiences; because of them, I do not think about the natural world around me as much as I should. I do not give it the reverence it deserves
Beyond the obvious complaint that we mostly only touch nature to kill it, there is another complaint which ought to be addressed. So much great poetry has been written because of nature! Wordsworth, Hesiod, Vergil, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Akbar, Stallings, Bos-- these myriad poets have made art inspired by the natural world. But today, nature poetry is hardly the norm. We have poems of loss, of love, of atomism, of fear, and those poetic themes are all intensely valuable. Just as I don't mean to attack technology, I certainly don't mean to devalue non-nature-poems.
The problem is thus: nature is dying around us, and our nature poetry is waning as well. One or the other of these situations may be acceptable, but the presence of both at once presents an alarming concern. We don't think about nature as much anymore, and we don't write about nature as much anymore, and because we don't write about it as much, we don't think about it as much, and because we don't think about it as much, we don't write about it as much, et cetera ad perpetuum. We can't live inside our urban heat domes and leave our progenitor to wither away. Nature is like Tinkerbell. If we don't keep her in our thoughts, she dies. (I've never seen Peter Pan. Isn't that how it goes?)
So, I present to you: Hawk and Whippoorwill. A revitalized and reorganized magazine of nature poetry, designed to give people who write about nature or our role in it an opportunity to remind the rest of us, we world-weary urbanists, to call our mom. Let's get started.
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