Notes on Wordsworth, Baca, and Ginsburg

Wordsworth
Wordsworth's poem of 1807 "The World Is Too Much with Us" reminded me, as I mentioned in class, of my undergraduate professor Dr. Simon Gikandi, whose image in permanently fixed in my mind as he described the way the "muse" might strike a poet who is in relaxed repose. In the poem, Wordsworth laments the increasing industrialization of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Britain, for this industrialization, he believes, prevents us from "seeing" nature. For there to be truly beautiful, sensitive, and impassioned poetry, individuals must have the opportunity to reflect on the natural word around them (and perhaps this is a function of economic privilege). Individual must have, as it were, unmediated experiences of nature, free of the interference of technologies that increasingly occupy and complicate our lives. Wordsworth worried about the future of poetry as a result of unstoppable technological advancement. I asked in class whether, following Wordsworth's worry, we today have time in our lives for the "sublime" (or the "muse"). We are an industrialized nation and surely we create poetry, art, music, and other beautiful artifacts. Does artistic inspiration require, as Wordsworth thinks it does, powerful and emotional engagements with raw nature? We wondered in class what kind of civilization we do in fact have, if this is a "civilization" that increasingly compartmentalizes and mediates? I made a parallel, in reference to the final lines of Wordworth's poem, to Zitkala-Sa's essay "Why I am a Pagan," in which she distinguishes "Christian believers," who support "civilization," from pagans, who presumably represent the opposite of "civilization." Zitkala-Sa says that if so much ignorance and negative treatment of people and land occurs under the auspices of Christianity, she is, then, avowedly a "pagan" (even though in reality she was not). Wordsworth makes a similar move at the end of his poem: "I'd rather be / a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; / so might I, standing on this pleasant lea, / have glimpses that would make me less forlorn" (lines 9-12). I hope you will be able to explain Wordsworth's message here.

Baca
Jimmy Santiago Baca, a New Mexican, considers the ways in which our bodies might contain, as your book's introduction suggests, ancestral messages or instincts. He uses a Native American subject in his brief poem to reveals the existence, in one's "veins," of "another world / in full color" (lines 12-13). It is as if our bodies might be dislocated, might be uncomfortably inhabiting certain roles, homes, jobs, cities, but within our bodies, a different "original" story persists. We might be disoriented as a result of where we live or the job we do, but the message of our ancestry, Baca seems to suggest, can serve to orient us, provided we are willing to perceive such bodily, internal messages.

Ginsburg
First, consider the form of Ginsburg's "poem." How is it a poem? Also, what role does Whitman play in this poem? I have mentioned Whitman on numerous occasions, particularly in regard to his role as the great American bard, the American epic poet who, as he said, "contain[ed] multitudes." What is Ginsburg's purpose in locating his interaction with Whitman in a 1950s American supermarket? What does this poem have to say, if anything, about the "American environment" (since we are, after all, in a "Literature and the Environment" class)? What is Ginsburg's attitude regarding the ways in which America has changed since Whitman died (which is the reference in the final line)?