Nature, Poetry, and Ecopoetry

Mary Oliver once wrote “I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me, the door to the woods is the door to the temple.”⁽¹⁾  Mary Oliver is speaking about how she finds inspiration and a deep spiritual connection to the natural world.  She is also stating how the natural world is the foundation for her poetry. This is a sentiment shared by many poets.  However, this direct inspiration is just the beginning of the way nature shows up in poetry.

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As a style of poetry, nature poetry is actually a little more complicated than just seeing the natural world and writing about it.   Edward Hirsch discusses how poets view the term “nature” in this excerpt from A Poet’s Glossary.

“Our concepts of nature are relative, historically determined. The nature poem is affected by ideology, by…