A Study Of Wendell Berry’s Ecopoetic Thought

What is ecopoetics? Its meaning depends on how people understand "eco" and "poetics". Usually, there are three different meanings for each of these two words. "Poetics" is derived from Greek "poiesis", which means "making". It could be the making of poetry, literature or art. "Eco" is derived from Greek "oikas", "the home or place of dwelling". But what is "the home or place of dwelling"? Some views the nature as the root of humans’life, regarding the nature as "the home or place of dwelling" Some regards the environment where human lives as "the home or place of dwelling" Some notices that the word of "environment" has the meaning of "surroundings" implying the detachment of human being from the surroundings, so they don’t make a distinction between human being and environment, just regards "the home or place of dwelling" as "eco" According to these three different meanings of "eco" and "poetics", we could get nine different kinds of meanings of ecopoetics:All these understandings come from the care of eco-problems, having the will of improving "the home or place of dwelling", so all of them can be called ecopoetics in a broad view. From the understanding of "ecopoetics" by authors like Hwa Yol Jung, Leonard Scigaj, Jonathan Bate, even though in different ways, but they all agree that ecopoetics cares the "making" in "the home or place of dwelling", believes the power of ecopoetry, literature or art, and tries to improve the relationships between human and nature, environment or place of dwelling by the making of ecopoetry, literature or art.Wendell Berry is regarded as a representative poet of nature, environment or place by the Journal of Trumpet, Scott Slovic, Lothar Honnighausen, Leonard Scigaj, Jonathan Bryson, Lawrence Buell and other ecocritics by his love and caring of the place of dwelling, appreciation and respect of nature, reflection and resistance of alienated life, and his persistent criticize on destructive behavior of eco-system. Like Gary Snyder, Jonathan Skinner and other poets, he not only writes poet, but also has some theoretical essays exploring how should people make art in the place of dwelling in the books of A Continuous Harmony, What are people for?, The art of Common-place, Life is a Miracle, Imagination in Place et al. He emphasizes that people should make proper art in the place of dwelling, and believes that people could rebuild the home or place of dwelling by appropriate making. Therefore, I suggest that we could call his poetical thought as ecopoetical thougt.Eco and poetics could be taken as two key words of this paper. How does Berry understand "the home or place of dwelling"? In order to protect "the home or place of dwelling", what kind of "making"’should people do?This paper summarizes two dimensions of meaning in Berry’s understanding of "the home or place of dwelling". The first dimension is that Berry understands "the home or place of dwelling" as one that God creates. In this "home or place of dwelling" all creatures were created and united orderly by God’s spirit. Human being, who was made in God’s image and after God’s likeness, is not God or animals, so human being can’t vainly attempt to know and control everything, neither denied his accountability on other creatures. Berry disagrees with the opposition of "the world" and "the heaven" in the Christian doctrine, and regards the world as the final home or place of dwelling for human being. The second dimension is that Berry understands "the home or place of dwelling" as local places which people exactly live in. To protect "the home or place of dwelling" that God created, Berry criticized those so called global environmental protection activities. He thinks the word "global" is too abstract to grasp, which mostly distract people’s attention from those small and private problems that is possible to solve to those incomprehensible and confused words. Berry reckons that people can raise significant issues and find effective solution for them only in a particular place of dwelling. So, Berry encourages the return to the place of dwelling, the country or the community.Berry points out that back to place doesn’t simply mean inhabiting in one place; it requires people to activate his sensations in the place to perceive the place and image it. In the perception, people could truly feel the connection among the creatures and comprehend the differences and changes of every living thing. In the imagination, people could see the connections between God and the whole creatures, and the holiness of the creatures in the place. The awareness of place could be truly built in the process of perception and imagination of place.For the earnest purpose of protecting "the home or place of dwelling",Berry defines poiesis in a broad way. "Poiesis" has the same meaning as "techne" in Greek. Greek "techne" was translated into "art" in Engish. By "art", Berry means "all the ways by which humans make the things they need". The making of poetry, farming, gardening, carpentry, weaving and so on could become the "making" of protecting "the home or place of dwelling". This paper is going to discuss how Berry understands the making of good art and the making of language in chapter four and five.To Berry, art could be simply divided into good art and bad art. Berry holds that everyone, as an artist, has the responsibility to make good arts but not bad arts. Because good arts can not only maintain the good relationship between humans and other creatures, but also rebuild "the home or place of dwelling", however, bad arts produce the opposite effects. Berry believes that good arts are arts that always relating to reverence. They revere the source of the materials, the place they were made, the art works, and their users.When he talks about how to use language, Berry always emphasizes the relation between the use of language and the protection of place. Abstract or inappropriate use of language would cause the alienation of humans and other creatures and communities. Therefore, Berry thinks that people should go back to the place where the language originated to make language retain its ability of referring to real things. People should be responsible for his or her words, and make the acts unanimous to the words. About the language in the poetry or other literary forms, Berry stresses that the theme of the language is the world, not the language itself.Comparing to Leonard Scigaj, Jonathan Bate, Jonathan Skinner and other eco-critics, Berry’s ecopoetic thought has the following distinctive characteristics:first, the philosophical sources are different. Although they all care about the relation between humans and other species or relation between humans and the world, and also explores how to inhabit better in "the home or place of dwelling", Berry’s ecopoetic though mainly comes from Agrarian and Christian traditions but not from Heidegger or Merleau-Panty. Second, under the influence of Agrarian and Christian traditions, Berry’s understanding of eco is not the same as Scigaj or Bate. Scigaj makes a distinction between ecopoetry and environmental poetry, but since he regards ecopoetry as one kind of environmental poetry, so we could say he doesn’t take them as two fundamentally different things. Bate notices the dilemma of the word environment which implies the separation between humans and nature, then he regards "eco" as "the home or place of dwelling". Berry expressed the same idea as Bate in his writings during 1980-90s, but since he is greatly influenced by the Agrarian tradition, hence he especially stresses that people really should practice in a specific place, in a community. Moreover, Berry defines art as "all the ways by which humans make the things they need", which gives "making" or "art" a broader meaning than others. All in all, Berry’s ecopoetic thought could be called as poetics of art of place under the influence of Agrarian and Christian traditions.Berry’s ecopoetic thought emphasizes people should go back to a particular "home or place of dwelling" to protect the creatures in the place by good arts and proper language. This kind of ecopoetic thought is a unity of ecological holism and ecobioregionalism, providing a good example of how ecological ideas were practiced in the place. But in the request of responding to some global ecological crisis, what should people do in different regions, countries, or continents to unite together to solve some big and real problems? That is a question requires further investigation. Besides, Berry’s understanding of "the home or place of dwelling" and his definition and requirements of art are based on the existence of God, God created the world, and God’s spirit resides in every single creatures and thus they are related to each other. As a result, for those people who don’t believe there is a god in the world, it is difficult to accept Berry’s theory, and Berry’s ecopoetic thought would only be some sort of narrow-minded localism.