On "humankind & nature"

Graphic from the homepage for the course "Human Nature and Human Diversity" at Rutgers University.

The following text was included in a call for submissions sent out earlier this year for our journal of nature poetry:

      Hawk & Whippoorwill, whose theme is “man and nature,” is now reading submissions for our December issue. We invite you to submit yourselves, or, to share this call for submissions with other writers in your circle.
      Originally published back in the 60s, H&W has been host to poets from all walks of life, and we hope to continue that tradition with the “new series” revival of the magazine ... We will gladly accept any unpublished poems which deal with our theme of man and nature. (Of course, we read “man” as “humanity” here, not as a gendered term. While we inherit the original tagline, we are definitely interested in challenging its restrictive implication!)

Among the replies we received to this solicitation, we got a particularly thought-provoking email from Barbara Ras. She wrote:

Submissions call: poems for endangered and threatened animals

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: In conjunction with the latest revival of the nature-themed literary magazine Hawk & Whippoorwill, Pen & Anvil is pleased to announce a series of chapbooks dedicated to endangered and threatened animals in the New England area.

Poems for Plovers is a chapbook about plovers. To protect the eggs and chicks of the piping plover (Charadrius melodus), beaches along the Atlantic coast close each nesting season--a conservation effort that has benefited the species greatly over the past thirty years.

Songs for Salamanders is a chapbook about salamanders. Four species of salamander are threatened or of special concern in Massachusetts: the Jefferson salamander, the blue-spotted salamander, the marbled salamander, and the eastern spadefoot. They live under rocks and logs and they deserve your love and poetic tribute.

Music for Myotises is a chapbook about mouse-eared bats. Five species of bats are endangered in Massachusetts: the Indiana myotis, the small-footed myotis, the little brown myotis, the tricolored bat, and the northern long-eared bat.

Cicada Sex-song is a chapbook about cicadas and their summer songs. Five species of cicada are known to call Massachusetts home; we call them all "cicada." They are not endangered, but we are concerned about them, and hope that they have all that they need for a good life.

Direct your art and poetry submissions to chapbooks@penandanvil.com.

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Contributors will each receive two complimentary copies. Previously published material will be considered. Pen & Anvil does not require exclusive publication rights. Physical copies will be available for sale via the Press website; PDF copies will be available for free.

Pen & Anvil is a not-for-profit literary publishing operation based in Boston. Its chapbook catalogue includes the Komma Series and "Breakfast All Day," a collection of poetry dedicated to breakfast.

On Existence and the Justification Thereof

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.

Regarding lit mag submissions and prior publication

(Annals of an Editor, #75)

This weekend I was at a reading for a group of plein air poets whose work had been gathered together for yet another chapbook by editor Susan Richmond. The poets had been invited to visit the orchards and sculpture gardens of Old Frog Pond Farm in Harvard, Mass., where each of them selected a spot to stand or sit, and in that moment take in the landscape, as a painter does when capturing a scene in the moment. The poems produced in response were each in accordance with this year’s theme: “memoir.”

(At the reading, many people said it was a perfect day for poetry, commenting on the bright sunshine, on the late summer gold in the air. I rather felt that this was a terrible day for poetry… A day suitable for a picnic, or sitting beside the beach, is not a good day for a poem. Snowy days, foggy days, thunderstorm days—any day you have to stay inside, that’s a good day for poetry reading.)

After the reading, we two dozen poets and sixty-something guests mingled on the grass beside the mill pond and ate canapés and drank lemonade while we chatted. More than once, I was asked about our new publication, Hawk & Whippoorwill. Or rather, not a new publication, but one renewed, for H&W was first published in the 60s, edited by August Derleth of Arkham House; and then again in a “new series”, edited by a group of Boston-based writers, about a decade ago. This latest revival is therefore the third life for the magazine.

Given that the order of the day at Old Frog Pond Farm was plein air poetry, it was natural enough that people wanted to talk about the new Hawk & Whippoorwill, the focus of which is poems “of humanity and nature.” It turns out that my call for submissions had been circulating among this crowd, and more than one person there had already submitted. And here is where I get to the point of today’s post.

More than one poet expressed concern that they had committed a faux pas by submitting material that has previously appeared somewhere, be it a blog, chapbook, or even, in one case, as a spoken word performance on the radio.

Here’s what I told them: They should not have patience, as I do not have patience, with publications that give a damn about prior appearances.