Lit Guide-35-104 PDF - Granada Hills Charter High School

romanticized this past in fantasy… but they despised our real human presence…but now we were present. Alive, a force to be reckoned with.”40...

romanticized this past in fantasy… but they despised our real human presence…but now we were present. Alive, a force to be reckoned with.”40 Significantly, the Fat-Eaters take the name “The Beautiful People” once again, rejecting the name given to them by others. Angel states, “even with a few dissenters we were a field of rich soil growing.”41 Hogan paints a new beginning for Angel and her relatives, one that offers the possibility for them to create their own futures and to preserve and continue Indigenous communities and ways of being in the world, even in the face of an environmental crisis. LITERARY CONTEXTS OF THE Cree men look on as a researcher takes a water sample NOVEL from James Bay. The Cree suspect Hydro-Quebec’s massive Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism: Women Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA dams and reservoirs along the La Grande and Eastmain rivers release so much fresh water they have damaged, if in Environmental Literature not destroyed, the salt-loving eelgrass beds all the way up to In literary analysis, many schools of literary criticism Hudson Bay, more than 100 kilometres to the north. provide ways of reading or understanding important Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO elements in a text. Critics use literary theories to talk about literature, art, and culture.42 Ecocriticism seeks People, who appear in between hunts, contribute to examine the connection between literature and the an especially important reflection. They tell Angel, environment. The ecocritical turn in literature emerged “There are stories for everything… but not for this. alongside the environmental justice movement in We needed a story for what was happening to us the 1980s from a longstanding set of philosophies now, as if a story would guide us.”38 The stories and politics that included Marxism, feminism, being reported widely centered the perspective of the conservationism, and animal rights. Its tenets are Canadian government and the corporation, calling the manifold; however, there are two principles that are protesters “occupiers” and referring to them as the most critical to our contemporary understanding of enemy.39 The Greater River News and other papers, ecocriticism. The first comes from its activist nature radio, and television broadcasts, as well as government that seeks the equitable distribution of resources as documents such as the dam proposal itself, all failed well as the equitable disposal of them. The second to recognize or value Indigenous people or their rights highlights the social sciences’ commitment to legal and to their own lands and lives. Like the maps that failed policy change to protect people and resources. Bush earlier during the kayaking journey, Indigenous people were excluded from and erased from history This focus on justice answered a problematic and from the present. Printed words were weapons, issue in early environmentalism, namely that most and ones that were reinscribed and upheld by courts. representatives of those earlier movements were white males who tended to overlook the effects of During the year after Angel escapes the violence and environmental issues on marginalized communities, fracturing at the protest site, she testifies regularly including Native Americans, women, and people of in the court case against the dam construction, color. Ecocritics teaching during this period helped familiarizing herself with legal terms, historical maps, to reframe the environmental movement’s focus by and petitions. During the court battle, Angel notes the including works such as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest way that despite grassroots organizing and increased Eye (1970) and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony attention to the American Indian Movement, people (1977). In the mid-1990s, this issue was beginning to view her community as lacking. She declares, “To be bridged in large part by the inclusion of women and others we were such insignificant people. In their especially black communities in the environmental minds we were only a remnant of the past. They 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 35  Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA French feminist theorist François d’Eaubonne coined the term “ecofeminism” in 1974. Photo portrait of Toni Morrison for the first-edition back cover of her debut novel, The Bluest Eye (1970). Ecocritics helped therein. First-wave ecocriticism focused on defining to reframe the environmental movement’s focus by including and describing a tradition of nature writing, through works such as The Bluest Eye. works such as Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness and Gary Snyder’s Turtle justice movement. For example, ecocritics such as Island, which explicitly advocated for cultural shifts Greta Gaard and Cheryll Glotfelty were interested in away from Anthropocentrism. In their foundational representing a diversity of voices and experiences from 1996 work The Ecocriticism Reader, Cheryll the beginning of their work. Glotfelty and Harold Fromm outline the beginnings of In addition to its social and political positions, ecocriticism from its early iterations in nature writing ecocriticism functions as a means to explore the through second-wave developments that include social philosophical, spiritual, psychological, and aesthetic justice issues, ecology, and literature. aspects of works of literature, emphasizing such Since then, the field has evolved to deal more critically concepts as a human’s place in the world, viewing the with matters of race, class, gender, and sexuality, as land as one’s home, defining the richness and beauty Lawrence Buell explains in his 2005 book The Future of the natural world as a place that awakens the soul, of Environmental Criticism. Second-wave ecocritics, and searching for or identifying a community’s history such as Buell, argue that environmental studies within a local landscape. should include both traditional notions of nature Though not merely a political project, American along with urban spaces. This shift allows for greater ecocriticism is concerned with the intersections among attention to topics such as toxic waste, Indigenous environment and culture and the literary interventions land rights, ecological racism, and ecofeminism. 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 36 Later ecocritics Scott Slovic, Joni Adamson, and Serpil Opperman are among scholars who identified emerging areas of ecocriticism in relation to the Global South, materiality, sustainability, multiethnicity, bioregionalism, and more. Ecofeminism is a specific approach within the larger field of ecocriticism. The term ecofeminism was coined in 1974 by French feminist theorist François d’Eaubonne.43 One of the most popular ways of reading Solar Storms is through the critical lens of ecofeminism. This lens allows critics to focus on An Indigenous man protests the decision of Robert Bourassa, elements of the book that deal with the subjugation then premier of Quebec, to move forward with the James Bay of nature and the environment. Ecofeminism can be hydroelectric project without input from those living in the defined as a “philosophy that emphasizes the way impacted area. both women and nature are treated by male-centered society, examining the effect of gender categories in government over the needs of the Native people. “Land order to demonstrate the ways in which social norms can be seen simultaneously as a geographic place, a Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA exert unjust dominance over women and nature.”44 In culturally significant place, and a sovereign territory.”45 short, ecofeminism looks at the ways in which women When reading the novel through this lens, some of and the environment are linked and valued or devalued the important critiques might be the disregard for the in society in pursuit of more traditionally defined historical occupancy of Native people on the land masculine values. where the rivers are being re-routed; ignoring their traditional ways of life including subsistence fishing, An example of an ecofeminist reading of Solar Storms trapping/hunting, and farming; and devaluing their would be one that looks at the ways in which the way of living as antiquated because it is different. government and BEEVCO company—in contrast to the female protagonists of the story—see the land as Solar Storms emphasizes the view that the Canadian a resource for development and profit rather than as a government and the corporation see the land primarily resource that should be protected, preserving the lands as an extractable resource. Dora-Rouge and Angel and animals for future generations. Another instance recognize this mentality as a self-imposed “forgetting” in the novel that can be read through an ecofeminist of how to live in the world. Dora-Rouge explains “[the framework is when the BEEVCO employees lose supporters of the dam] called this world dangerous… respect for Tulik as an elder and tribal leader because they had trapped themselves inside their own he is adept at comforting the baby Aurora during the destruction of it.” Hogan distinguishes Indigenous meeting. In the novel, women are instrumental in the communities from the dam builders in their drive to protect the environment. Angel, Bush, Dora, relationships with the land. She writes, “Their legacy, and Agnes carry many stories and traditions of the past [Angel] began to understand, had been the removal of that honor the environment as part of their community. spirit from everything, from animals, trees, fishhooks, and hammers, all the things the Indians had as allies.46 Colonialism and the Environment One of the major themes in Solar Storms is the Animals and the Environment relationship between the environment and settler Animal studies has a significant place in literary colonialism. In the novel, as in the James Bay theory and analysis. As a relatively new field of confrontation that serves partly as the basis for the interdisciplinary study, it helps readers contextualize novel, the government and economic interests facilitate and question the presence and meaning of animals in the erasure of Native communities and their way of literature. Animal studies “draws from the humanities, life. The government portrayed in the novel takes social sciences, and natural sciences to examine away the agency of the people who will be affected by what nonhuman animals are like, how human and the dam project. Instead, it values the desires of the nonhuman animals relate to each other, and the 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 37  In Solar Storms, animals are represented throughout the novel as characters in their own right, such as Wolverine, who crosses the boundaries between animal, man, and spirit. aesthetic, moral, social, political, economic, and Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA ecological significance of these relations.”47 In Solar Storms, animals are represented throughout the novel as characters in their own right, such as Wolverine, who crosses the boundaries between animal, man, and spirit. Beaver is represented as a creator figure in Bush’s and Dora’s stories, while also representing, along with the moose and fish, the changing ecosystem and threat of the disappearance of Native values in the Ecologist Kyle Powys Whyte (Potawatomi). face of environmental destruction. By Kyle Whyte - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98327514 Environmental Place The scholar Timothy Cresswell defines place as “central to forms of struggle and resistance,” Environmental place theories are multidisciplinary recognizing the “often mentioned ‘power of place’” and include areas of inquiry such as anthropology, in constructing identity and belonging. Space and sociology, narratology, phenomenology, and place theories contribute largely to environmental geography. Two particularly useful literary tools literature as a multidisciplinary study, especially to for reading environmental place are Geographer the importance of “place imagination.”48 In Solar D.W. Meinig’s “The Beholding Eye: Ten Versions Storms, place attachment and place identity shape of the Same Scene” (1979) and Yi-Fu Tuan’s article the characters’ responses to environmental crises, “Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective” (1979). particularly in light of certain threats to cultural and Interpreting the landscape for meaning, Meinig states, historical relationships with land. Lawrence Buell is to be “concerned not with the elements but with the notes that “the more a site feels like a place, the more essence, with the organizing ideas we use to make fervently it is so cherished, the greater potential sense out of what we see.”50 Tuan points out how an concern at its violation, or even the possibility of environmental “place” becomes meaningful rather violation.”49 This literary connection to place is not than a depersonalized or exploitable “space.” strictly limited to physical locations; attachment can This interdisciplinary approach to reading Solar be achieved through literary representations of place Storms emphasizes “people’s spatial feelings and ideas as a means of awakening environmental concerns, in the stream of experience.”51 The potential of water including social and historical connectedness, such as to alter landscapes, and thus habitat and community, Angel’s burgeoning feeling of connection to the place is uniquely important in the novel, where biota endure where her ancestors were born and survived. threats from technologies, such as dam construction 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 38 and resource mining. In Solar Storms, water is a and inter-annual environmental changes. At the same cultural, historical, and territorial relative that is time, our societies have been heavily disrupted by threatened by hydrodam projects. Specific sites of colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization.”52 water may be viewed by local and global communities in various and competing ways, including water as Many works of Indigenous literature, such as The nature, as habitat, as a system of scientific processes, Swan Book (2013), The Marrow Thieves (2017), and as a problem to solve (industrial pollution or flooding, Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018) can be read as for example), as potential wealth, as an ideology, in commentaries on the environmental crisis that suggest terms of historical significance, in terms of aesthetics, ways to redress anthropogenic climate change. As or even as place. Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee) notes in his literary manifesto Why Indigenous Literatures Matter: Indigenous Literature and Climate [Indigenous] literatures are just one more Change vital way we have countered forces of Many scholars read Solar Storms as a novel that is erasure and given shape to our own ways situated within the context of climate change, due to of being in the world…They help us bridge the changing nature of the land and its relationship the gap of human imagination between one to industrial development. According to ecologist another, between other human communities, Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA Kyle Powys Whyte (Potawatomi), Indigenous climate and between us and other-than-human studies “often reflect the memories and knowledges beings.53 that arise from Indigenous peoples’ living heritages as societies with stories, lessons, and long histories Indigenous literature can respond to climate change by of having to be well-organized to adapt to seasonal affirming Indigenous presence and practices. 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 39  Section IV Shorter Selections POETRY: “THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US” BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH William Wordsworth: Biography William Wordsworth (1770−1850) was born in Cumberland, a famous scenic region in England also Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA referred to as the Lake District. One of five children, he lost his mother at a young age, followed a few years later by the death of his father. He attended Hawkshead school as a boy, where he was able to indulge in nature in addition to his fine education. However, he later became disenchanted by the competitive nature of his studies at St. John’s College and instead found solace in an extended summer walking tour of Revolutionary France in 1790. There, he developed allegiances with the revolutionaries fighting against the Ancien Régime for social and economic equality, sympathies he would revisit during his time in London as he encountered the ravages of war in his own country.54 The French Revolution had an enormous impact on Wordsworth’s early work as well as on the Romantic period in general. In addition to his contributions to the Romantic movement, Wordsworth was part of a group of English poets called the Lake Poets. The Lake Poets lived in William Wordsworth, 1770–1850. Painting from the British the Lake District of what is now Cumbria, England, National Trust. at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The group included William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor One of the main features of Wordsworth’s poems Coleridge, and Robert Southey, among others. Though that contradicted the popular poetry of the preceding these poets did not subscribe to any cohesive collective periods was his focus on representing common vision of the Lake District, they were grouped together folk as his subjects and using vernacular language by geographic residence and the subject of their poetry in his poetry. Partially a response to the scientific and prose—the surrounding lakes and the relationship rationalization of nature in the Enlightenment period, between man and nature in general. They were looked Wordsworth’s poems reflect a desire to deeply connect on unfavorably by some peers, especially by Lord with nature and individual imagination, as well as a Byron, who critiqued what he considered their narrow revolt against aristocratic social and political norms. poetic scope and the poets’ abandonment of radical Wordsworth was especially interested in observing politics in their later years. how those norms detracted from treating people and nature ethically, a theme he reckons with throughout 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 40 much of his poetry, including many famous works workers and its despoliation of nature, particularly the such as “The Prelude” and “Michael.” Wordsworth introduction of trains to the Lake District. criticized the Industrial Revolution for its treatment of SELECTED WORK: “The World Is Too Much With Us” (1807) by William Wordsworth The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. Structure and Analysis of “The World Is Too Much With Us”: Elegy and Industrialism Wordsworth’s famous early poem “The World Is Too Much With Us” is an example of a sonnet. An English sonnet is written in fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. As this poem is also a Petrarchan sonnet, its last six lines (sestet) provide a response or answer to the first eight lines (octave). Sonnets were particularly popular in Elizabethan England, and Shakespeare wrote over 150 English sonnets. The Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet scheme that Wordsworth uses in this poem differs structurally from a Shakespearean sonnet, which typically features three quatrains and a rhyming Rydal Mount, Wordsworth’s home from 1813–50. couplet to “answer,” or provide a solution to, the By Richard Swales, CC BY-SA 2.0, problem introduced in the earlier lines. This “turn” in https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13650439 the poem is referred to as the volta. longer recognize the beauty inherent in nature. The Wordsworth’s poem comments on humanity’s juxtaposition between the words “sordid” and “boon” alienation from nature, a common theme in Romantic in line 4 suggests that whatever advantages are provided poetry. The poem is situated within the context of by the widespread availability of material goods, they the Industrial Revolution, a time of enormous growth are overshadowed by humankind’s loss of wonder at the and innovation. The speaker suggests that people world. Thus, the poem can be seen as elegiac in that it have become consumed with material goods and no laments the disconnect between humans and nature as 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 41 humans have come to favor the artificial. The speaker appeals to God in line 9 by use of an apostrophe, seeking solace in the following lines in allusions to Greek gods associated with the sea. This reflects a further lamentation at the loss of society’s spiritual connection to nature, which the poet personifies in line 5, referencing the Sea as a woman. It is typical for poems in this period to describe the natural world as “Mother Nature,” and the symbolism in Wordsworth’s poem is no exception. The speaker is concerned that people have become “out of tune” with nature and have been and will be suffering because of it. POETRY: “FREEWAY 280” BY LORNA DEE CERVANTES Lorna Dee Cervantes: Biography Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA Cervantes (b. 1954) is an award-winning Chicana poet, activist, and scholar who was raised in San Jose, California, by her mother and grandmother. Her parents are of Mexican and Native American (Chumash) descent. Growing up, Cervantes was strictly forbidden from speaking any language but English in the home, as her parents were concerned Lorna Dee Cervantes at a round table in Mexico City in 2017. with prejudice against Spanish-speaking citizens in By Poleth Rivas / Secretaría de Cultura CDMX - https://www.flickr.com/ the United States.55 This personal history appears in photos/culturacdmx/34858937264/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons. wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=118091678 her poetry alongside “themes of identity, feminism, cultural heritage, and social justice, capturing the teenager she believed that “poetry had died out a complex experiences of Latinx communities in hundred years ago…[and] had this sense that poetry the United States.”56 Cervantes has made major was for the aristocratic classes who had the leisure contributions to Chicana/o poetry in addition to to sit around and write it.”57 As a poet-activist, her teaching at colleges and universities from California to work, like Wordsworth’s, is greatly concerned with Colorado to Texas. class-consciousness, and she deliberately writes in In a 2007 interview entitled “Poetry Saved My Life,” an accessible style for bilingual speakers, though Cervantes explained that Pablo Neruda’s poetry Anglophone readers may find the work challenging. was a strong influence on her life, as well as that Her poems are often semiautobiographical, including of Maya Angelou, Phillis Wheatley, Gwendolyn “Freeway 280,” which references an urban barrio in Brooks, and other Black women poets. Because she California where she grew up. had previously only read the Romantic poets, as a 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 42  SELECTED WORK: “Freeway 280” (1981) by Lorna Dee Cervantes “Freeway 280” from Emplumada by Lorna Dee Cervantes, © 1981. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. Las casitas near the gray cannery, nestled amid wild abrazos of climbing roses and man-high red geraniums are gone now. The freeway conceals it all beneath a raised scar. But under the fake windsounds of the open lanes, in the abandoned lots below, new grasses sprout, wild mustard remembers, old gardens come back stronger than they were, trees have been left standing in their yards. Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA Albaricoqueros, cerezos, nogales... Viejitas come here with paper bags to gather greens. Espinaca, verdolagas, yerbabuena... I scramble over the wire fence that would have kept me out. Once, I wanted out, wanted the rigid lanes to take me to a place without sun, without the smell of tomatoes burning on swing shift in the greasy summer air. Maybe it’s here en los campos extraños de esta ciudad where I’ll find it, that part of me mown under like a corpse or a loose seed. Structure and Analysis of “Freeway 280”: by, and “abandoned lots below” to the colorful and “wild” fruits and flowers that flourish underneath the Landscape and Wilderness imposing freeway, including apricots, vivid cherry and In “Freeway 280,” Cervantes uses a mix of English walnut trees, spinach, and purslane that still sustain and Spanish words to describe the place and ecology the “viejitas” (little old ladies) who harvest them. On of the area underneath and around the San Jose first inspection, the poem’s tone may seem dismal; highway, reflecting her experience with dual language however, the speaker’s nostalgic tone in the first and Latinx community and heritage. The poem stanza, and assertion that “new grasses sprout, wild juxtaposes the colorful, rioting embrace of “wild mustard remembers, old gardens come back stronger roses and man-high red geraniums” against the stark, than they were” alludes to the strength and resilience desolate imagery of the manmade freeway that cuts of people who survive in that community underneath across the land like a gash, leaving a “raised scar.” the rigid and overpowering freeway. The speaker compares the bleak images of the “gray cannery,” “fake windsounds” of cars whooshing The poem’s dreary diction suggests a challenging 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 43  Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA Poet Naomi Shihab Nye at a San Antonio book signing in 2008. By User:Micahd, CC BY-SA 3.0, An aerial view of Interstate 280 near San Jose, California. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30204259 By Dicklyon - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58218278 artist and teacher. Shihab Nye has spent much of her life upbringing for the speaker, who remembers wishing, in Texas, where she teaches creative writing at Texas as a child, that the freeway would take her away. The State University. In addition to writing poetry, she is freeway used to represent freedom in that sense, but a songwriter, novelist, essayist, editor, and children’s now the speaker “scramble[s] over the wire fence” book writer. In 2013, she received the Neustadt Prize for to reconnect with their history and home. The poem Children’s Literature, and she has been the recipient of can be seen as a homecoming for the speaker, where four Pushcart prizes and several fellowships. they are searching the grassy fields outside the city Shihab Nye has written more than twenty volumes for a lost self. The word “extraños” in the final stanza of poetry and describes herself as a “wandering is significant since it can have multiple meanings, poet.”58 Nye draws on “her Palestinian-American including “strange” or “queer” or “foreign,” as well heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, as “missed,” which all inflect the final lines with a and her experiences traveling in Asia, Europe, sense of longing, while the contradiction between Canada, Mexico, Central and South America and “corpse” and “loose seed” allows the reader to infer the the Middle East, us[ing]her writing to attest to our speaker’s rebirth in rediscovering their roots. shared humanity.”59 Her poems often advocate for Arab Americans, particularly in the wake of the POETRY: “DIFFERENT WAYS TO discriminatory backlash against Muslims, Arabs, PRAY” BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE Sikhs, South Asians, and other individuals perceived Naomi Shihab Nye: Biography to be from Middle Eastern backgrounds that followed Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952) was born in St. Louis, the 9/11 terrorist attacks.60 Her poetry is inspired Missouri, and moved to the West Bank, Palestine, as a by her childhood memories, travel, and an in-depth teenager, but left after one year, just prior to the Six-Day intercultural exploration of seeking peace and common War. Her father, Aziz Shihab, was a Palestinian refugee ground across diverse cultures, locally and globally. and journalist. Her mother, Miriam, is an American 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 44 SELECTED WORK: “Different Ways to Pray” (1980) by Naomi Shihab Nye Naomi Shihab Nye, “Different Ways to Pray” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. There was the method of kneeling, a fine method, if you lived in a country where stones were smooth. The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards,    hidden corners where knee fit rock. Their prayers were weathered rib bones, small calcium words uttered in sequence, as if this shedding of syllables could somehow    fuse them to the sky. There were the men who had been shepherds so long    Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA they walked like sheep. Under the olive trees, they raised their arms— Hear us! We have pain on earth! We have so much pain there is no place to store it! But the olives bobbed peacefully in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme. At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese,    and were happy in spite of the pain,    because there was also happiness. Some prized the pilgrimage, wrapping themselves in new white linen    to ride buses across miles of vacant sand.    When they arrived at Mecca    they would circle the holy places,    on foot, many times, they would bend to kiss the earth and return, their lean faces housing mystery. While for certain cousins and grandmothers the pilgrimage occurred daily,    lugging water from the spring or balancing the baskets of grapes. These were the ones present at births, humming quietly to perspiring mothers. The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses,    forgetting how easily children soil clothes. There were those who didn’t care about praying. The young ones. The ones who had been to America.    They told the old ones, you are wasting your time. Time?—The old ones prayed for the young ones.    2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 45  They prayed for Allah to mend their brains, for the twig, the round moon, to speak suddenly in a commanding tone. And occasionally there would be one who did none of this, the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,    who beat everyone at dominoes, insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,    and was famous for his laugh. Analysis of “Different Ways to Pray”: Sacred Nature; New Pastoral Shihab Nye’s poem “Different Ways to Pray” links nature to the sacred by exploring themes of identity, Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA culture, worship, and prayer. Each stanza describes the style and circumstances surrounding the ways different people pray, paying attention to the ways that nature imagery and material spaces become holy sites when inhabited by prayer. The first stanza focuses on women who kneel on rough stones, dreaming “wistfully of bleached courtyards, hidden corners where knee fit rock.” These terms, A Palestinian shepherd tends to his flock. The second stanza of alongside the lines “their weathered rib bones and Nye’s poem is reminiscent of a traditional pastoral poem, as it small calcium words,” allude to the solid, material celebrates the experience of shepherds tending their sheep. nature of the body and earth joining together in Photo © Dave Copland prayer.” The words are “uttered in sequence,” so the prayer is an established ritual that the women repeat to symbolically as sheep who are shepherded by in hopes the prayer could “fuse them to the sky,” or God. The men in the poem pray underneath olive help them take on a more ethereal existence. Things trees, a common symbol of peace in many religious that might be otherwise considered mundane, such as traditions, exclaiming in prayer to God that “We knees, courtyards, and the sky become revered though have so much pain there is no place to store it!” The the act of prayer. In this way, prayer emphasizes the imagery and word choice in this stanza are both rustic importance of connecting with the material world and religious—emphasizing the pleasure of simple and recognizing the sacred in common, everyday foods that the men “eat heartily” in community with interactions. As in her other environmental poems, each other as well as a sense of joy in the communing such as “Muchas Gracias por Todo” and “300 Goats,” with each other and the earth despite the pain of being Naomi Shihab Nye blends the material world with the human. Partaking in the food of nature provides a spiritual. Her work often uses nature as a vehicle for respite and a reminder that “there is also happiness” in peace and hope. the face of agony. The second stanza is reminiscent of a traditional The natural imagery of shepherds, olive trees, flat pastoral poem, which celebrates the experience of bread, and white cheese is a nod to Arab cultural shepherds tending to their flocks of sheep. The men traditions as the poems moves forward to another in this poem have shepherded for so long, the speaker type of prayer: pilgrimage. Stanza three recounts the notes “they walked like sheep.” In some religious journey of pilgrims to Mecca, who travel far through traditions, especially Christianity, people are referred the desert to worship at holy places. The pilgrims have 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 46  of new values that younger generations have absorbed through cultural exchange with America. Older generations pray that God will speak to “the young ones” while in the final stanza, “Fowzi the fool… insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats” showing a reverence for and personal relationship with both God and animals. This type of prayer is conversational in tone, and the reference to Fowzi “beat[ing] everyone at dominoes” and being “famous for his laugh” elevates his status from fool as one who is lucky to experience the joy of simply being himself with the world. Other environmental poems by Nye include “Muchas Gracias por Todo” and “300 Goats.” POETRY: “WEBCAM THE WORLD” BY HEATHER MCHUGH Heather McHugh: Biography Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA The poet Heather McHugh. Heather McHugh (b. 1948) is an American poet a more internal experience than the shepherds, praising who was raised in Virginia. Her works have been God by bending “to kiss the earth,” with their “lean described as “intricately patterned compositions faces housing mystery” alluding to the practice of [that] explore various aspects of the human condition fasting. Alongside the image of “miles of vacant sand” and inspire wonder in the unexpected associations and the men “circl[ing] the holy places, on foot, many that language can evoke.”61 In addition to publishing times,” this form of prayer reflects a rigorous intention eight volumes of poetry, McHugh has also been a and an inner spiritual experience. translator, professor of creative writing, chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Guggenheim In contrast, the “certain cousins and grandmothers” fellow, and the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award enact prayer through the daily toil of work and care (2009).62 She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize for for their families. In this stanza, prayer is related poetry and the Griffin Prize, among others, and was to the exacting domestic work required to support shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in 2004. McHugh a community, including providing water and food, is known for her wordplay, as she often uses “puns, supporting mothers in childbirth, and nurturing rhymes, syntactical twists… that balance gravity with children through the practice of creating beautiful humor.”63 She earned her BA from Harvard in 1970 and culturally important patterns in their clothing. and a master’s degree from the University of Denver in This type of prayer illuminates the sacred in the 1972. After retiring from teaching at the University of mundane by highlighting the love and deep attention to Washington, she managed the nonprofit organization protecting and nurturing others. “CAREGIFTED” to “offer respite to long-term family The penultimate stanza reflects a loss of religious caregivers” of disabled and chronically ill relatives cultural heritage across generations with the integration until 2021.64 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 47  SELECTED WORK: “Webcam the World” (2009) by Heather McHugh From Upgraded to Serious, by Heather McHugh, published by Copper Canyon Press. Reprinted with permission from the publisher. Get all of it. set up the shots at every angle; run them online 24-7. Get beautiful stuff (like scenery and greenery and style) and get the ugliness (like cruelty and quackery and rue). there’s nothing unastonishing – but get that, too. We have to save it all, now that we can, and while. Do close-ups with electron microscopes and vaster pans with planetcams. Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA it may be getting close to our last chance – how many millipedes or elephants are left? How many minutes for mind-blinded men? Use every lens you can – get Dubliners in fisticuffs, the last Beijinger with an abacus, the boy in Addis Abada who feeds the starving dog. And don’t forget the cows in neck-irons, when barns begin to burn. the rollickers at clubs, the frolickers at forage – take it all, the space you need: it’s curved. Let mileage be footage, let year be light. Get goggles for the hermitage, and shades for whorage. Don’t be boggled by totality: we’re here to save the world without exception. it will serve as its own storage. Analysis of “Webcam the World”: – but get that, too.” The narrator urges readers to save everything now that the technology to do so is Documenting Nature in the Age of available, and “while” we have the chance. Climate Change “Webcam the World” begins with the command “Get The poem’s five stanzas use internal rhyme, such all of it. Set up the shots / at every angle; run them as “quackery and rue” paired with “get that too” online / 24-7.” These lines comment on the need to and “vaster pans” coupled with “planetcams” to document “the beautiful stuff” and “the ugliness” suggest an urgency that arises through the poem’s before we run out of time, while also commenting meter, quickening the pace of the poem. Urgency is on the absurdity of trying to document everything, heightened by the imagery of disappearing species such as in the line “there’s nothing unastonishing listed one after the other in quick succession, such as 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 48  A webcam mounted on a balcony in Helsinki, Finland. By Timo Newton-Syms from Helsinki, Finland and Chalfont St Giles, Bucks, UK - Webcam, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index. Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA php?curid=26293863 millipedes and elephants, or even “mind-blinded men.” McHugh includes various people, animals, places, and the expanse of time on the list of things that need saving, urging the reader to look deeper in places that seem hidden (“goggles for the hermitage”), and to get “shades for whorage,” or avoid the bright and glaring urge toward celebrity. Ironically, the poem asks people to use technologies to document the world that is being ravaged by the existence of those same technologies. Author Camille T. Dungy, photographed at the U.S. National The poet’s playfulness throughout the poem, especially Book Festival in 2018. in the disconnect between “we have” and “to save By Fuzheado - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, it all” and the final lines “it will serve / as its own https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72310771 storage,” remarks on the human drive to document nature using digital tools rather than to experience it POETRY: “THE BLUE” BY CAMILLE first-hand. While the documentation may live on, the world will not survive in its current form, partially T. DUNGY due to the abundance of and overuse of technologies. Camille T. Dungy: Biography The phrase “we’re here to save the world without Camille T. Dungy (b. 1972) is an American poet, exception” is a play on the word “save.” We “save” author, and professor. She grew up in the American documents and files to a computer, but saving the West and earned her BA from Stanford University world through documentation is not the same thing as and an MFA from the University of North Carolina, saving or protecting or preserving species of plants Greensboro. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim and animals, their habitats, and humankind. The actual fellowship for poetry, the American Book Award, world is profoundly threatened (as the “barns begin / two NAACP Image Award nominations, and several to burn”), so it’s a foolish distraction, perhaps, to focus fellowships from the National Endowment for the on recording everything before it’s gone rather than Arts.65 Her collection Smith Blue (2011) was the winner taking steps to halt the actual destruction. of the 2010 Crab Orchard Open Book Prize. 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 49 One of Dungy’s most important contributions to Writers Magazine, Dungy reflects on the intersections American literature stems from her “interest in the among writing and gardening, saying: “... I like to intersections between literature, environmental action, garden while I’m writing. Both require a sense of history, and culture.”66 Dungy served as editor of an observation that goes below the surface to intangibles, anthology of African-American environmental poetry, small details. You have to move with the flow of titled Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American something that is alive and vibrant—and surprising.”68 Nature Poetry (University of Georgia Press: 2009), Her literary aesthetic includes the garden as a site which garnered national attention. She is a prolific of poetic vision. Dungy is interested in reading, gardener at her home in Colorado, where she teaches at writing, and gardening as communal activities and Colorado State University and lives with her husband cites influences such as “Robin Wall Kimmerer, and daughter. Much of Dungy’s poetry and prose Jamaica Kincaid, Barbara Kingsolver, and Aimee considers the act of gardening, as well as motherhood, Nezhukumatathil as evidence that talking about family history, culture, love, landscape, and desire.67 and communal life in artistic work shows how hungry many are for a more expansive perspective.”69 In an interview with Renée H. Shea for Poets and SELECTED WORK: “The Blue” (2011) by Camille T. Dungy Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA “The Blue,” from Smith Blue, by Camille Dungy. Copyright © 2011 by Camille T. Dungy. All rights reserved. One will live to see the Caterpillar rut everything they walk on—seacliff buckwheat cleared, relentless ice plant to replace it, the wild fields bisected by the scenic highway, canyons covered with cul-de-sacs, gas stations, comfortable homes, the whole habitat along this coastal stretch endangered, everything, everyone, everywhere in it danger as well— but now they’re logging the one stilling hawk Smith sights, the conspiring grasses’ shh shhhh ssh, the coreopsis Mattoni’s boot barely spares, and, netted, a solitary blue butterfly. Smith ahead of him chasing the stream, Mattoni wonders if he plans to swim again. Just like that the spell breaks. It’s years later, Mattoni lecturing on his struggling butterfly. How fragile. If his daughter spooled out the fabric She’s chosen for her wedding gown, raw taffeta, burled, a bright hued tan, perhaps Mattoni would remember how those dunes looked from a distance, the fabric, balanced between her arms, making valleys in the valley, the fan above her mimicking the breeze. He and his friend loved everything softly undulating under the coyest wind, 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 50  and the rough truth as they walked through the land’s scratch and scrabble and no one was there, then, besides Mattoni and his friend, walking along Dolan’s Creek, in that part of California they hated to share. The ocean, a mile or so off, anything but passive so that even there, in the canyon, they sometimes heard it smack and pull well-braced rocks. The breeze, basic: salty, bitter, sour, sweet. Smith trying to identify the scent, tearing leaves of manzanita, yelling: “This is it. Here! This is it!” his hand to his nose, his eyes, having finally seen the source of his pleasure, alive. Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA In the lab, after the accident, he remembered it, the butterfly. How good a swimmer Smith had been, how rough the currents there at Half Moon Bay, his friend alone with reel and rod—Mattoni back at school early that year, his summer finished too soon— then all of them together in the sneaker wave, and before that the ridge, congregations of pinking blossoms, and one of them bowing, scaring up the living, the frail and flighty beast too beautiful to never be pinned, those nights Mattoni worked without his friend, he remembered too. He called the butterfly Smith’s Blue. Analysis of “The Blue”: Nature and land that they love so much—“the seacliff buckwheat cleared, relentless ice plant to replace it, the wild fields Impermanence bisected by the scenic highway, canyons covered with The “Blue” in this free verse poem refers to the Smith’s cul-de-sacs, gas stations, comfortable homes….” The blue butterfly, named for Claude I. Smith by his friend buckwheat is especially important to Smith’s blue Rudi Mattoni years after the pair first encountered it butterflies as it is their main source of food and where near Dolan Creek on the Big Sur Coast of California they lay their eggs. The ice plant is a nonnative invasive in 1948. The butterfly is listed by the U.S. Fish and species that crowds out buckwheat, while human Wildlife Service as an endangered species, due in part habitation in the poem can also be seen as invasive to to habitat loss stemming from the circumstances Dungy the coastal environment. In the poem, Dungy considers lists in the first stanza of the poem. personal tragedy alongside environmental catastrophe, Dungy tells the story of Smith and Mattoni’s friendship, likening the loss of a friend to environmental loss and the love and loss at the heart of their time together, emphasizing the impermanence of nature. alongside the beauty and tragedy of the coastal dunes In the second stanza, the speaker compares the dune they explored as undergraduates at the University of landscape to a silk wedding dress, both precious California, Berkeley. The poem’s tone is wistful as resources, and both vivid reminders of happy the speaker foreshadows the idea that only one of the occasions for Mattoni. Praising the landscape for its friends will live to see to see the devastation of the 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 51  A Smith’s blue butterfly. By Dianne Fristrom - http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?enlar Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA ge=0000+0000+1011+0123, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia. org/w/index.php?curid=25906781 vulnerability and strength, the speaker chronicles how the two scientists “loved everything / softly undulating under the coyest wind,” as well as the powerful ocean that they could hear smacking the rocks from a mile away. This section of the poem delights in vivid depictions of the natural world, including scent, as The poet Oliver Baez Bendorf. Mattoni discovers “the source of [Smith’s] pleasure, By Interwebthings - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia. alive” in the manzanitas near Dolan Creek. Finally, org/w/index.php?curid=59685031 the poem ends by emphasizing memory, associating Mattoni’s remembrance of past tragedy with the lasting Baez Bendorf has taught poetry at the University of image of the endangered blue butterfly named in honor Wisconsin, Kalamazoo College, and other institutions. of his dead friend. His work has been published in the American Poetry Review, BOMB, The Rumpus, New England Review, POETRY: “EVERGREEN” BY OLIVER Poetry Magazine, jubilat, Orion, Buzzfeed, and others. In his personal statement for the National Endowment BAEZ BENDORF for the Arts, Baez Bendorf reflects on writing during Oliver Baez Bendorf: Biography the global Covid pandemic, realizing that, “Reading Oliver Baez Bendorf (b.1987) is a poet, teacher, in this tumultuous year has re-grounded me in my librarian, and activist who was born and raised in purpose as a writer. What other writers—and the Iowa and now lives in Colorado. He is the author woods and rivers and fields and constellations—did of three poetry books, including the upcoming and do for me is what I want to do with language.”71 Consider the Rooster (2024). Baez Bendorf is the recipient of numerous awards, including a fellowship Baez Bendorf thinks of poems as “bodies on the page,” from CantoMundo, a National Endowment for the and his poetry often explores ideas about “becoming” Arts fellowship, the Betty Berzon Emerging Writer and “transformation.”72 In her review of The Award, and a fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute Advantages of Being Evergreen, Luiza Flynn-Goodlet for Creative Writing. His book Advantages of Being notes that Baez Bendorf’s poems engage with despair: Evergreen won the 2019 CSU Poetry Center Open Book “calling on language, ancestors, nature, and the life Prize and was called, “a book of the earth’s abiding force within, [he] transmutes that despair into poems wonder. And the body’s unbreakable ability to bloom.”70 that heal, locate resilience, and even spur joy.”73 Much 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 52 of his poetry considers the intersections among nature, spaces of being for people, objects, and ideas. writing, and the body—both the material and ethereal SELECTED WORK: “Evergreen” (2018) by Oliver Baez Bendorf Copyright © 2018 by Oliver Baez Bendorf. What still grows in winter? Fingernails of witches and femmes, green moss on river rocks, lit with secrets... I let myself go near the river but not the railroad: this is my bargain. Water boils in a kettle in the woods and I can hear the train grow louder but I also can’t, you know? Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA Then I’m shaving in front of an unbreakable mirror while a nurse watches over my shoulder. Damn. What still grows in winter? Lynda brought me basil I crushed with my finger and thumb just to smell the inside of a thing. So I go to the river but not the rail- road, think I’ll live another year. The river rock digs into my shoulders like a lover who knows I don’t want power. I release every muscle against the rock and I give it all my warmth.                               Snow shakes onto my chest quick as table salt. Branches above me full of pine needle whips: when the river rock is done with me, I could belong to the evergreen. Safety is a rock I throw into the river. My body, ready. Don’t even think a train run through this town anymore. Analysis of “Evergreen”: Nature and the Self on river rock lit with secrets,” suggests survival The poem “Evergreen” was written in 2016, while is ingrained in hardy things that have sustained Baez Bendorf was a fellow at the Vermont Studio themselves through challenges. Center, and later published in 2018. The scene of the The lines that follow alert the reader that the speaker is poem takes place in the woods during winter, as the considering the challenges that they have been through speaker meditates on living in despair. In the first that connect them to the harsh, wintery atmosphere: “I line of the poem, “What still grows in winter?,” the let myself go / near the river but not / the railroad: this speaker contemplates survival in difficult conditions. is my bargain.” These lines, coupled with the flashback The answer, “witches,” “femmes,”74 and “green moss 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 53  “Evergreen” can be placed into a long history of poems Poet, novelist, and memoirist Marge Piercy. that connect nature—especially winter and woods—to the Photo by Ira Wood contemplation of death and survival. was the first in her family to attend college.75 Her to the speaker’s time in a hospital suggest the poem’s Presbyterian father grew up in a soft coal mining town Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA subject may be reflecting on a previous suicide attempt. in Pennsylvania and later became a heavy machinery As in Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy repairman.76 Piercy credits her mother with instilling Evening,” the poem “Evergreen” can be placed into a in her a passion for poetry and Judaism. Her maternal long history of poems that connect nature—especially grandfather Morris, a union worker, was murdered winter and woods—to the contemplation of death and for organizing bakery workers77 and her “Lithuanian- survival. Winter woods can be a solitary place that born grandmother’s grief over relatives murdered by beckons and calls for quiet introspection. the Nazis” encouraged Piercy’s vow to always remain Jewish.78 Piercy was an anti-Vietnam War activist, The “scent of basil” helps break the speaker’s reverie and her work reflects an interest in politics, feminism, in line 14, where the poem shifts to a more hopeful Marxism, Jewish spirituality, and the environment. tone. As the speaker decides that they will live, they After moving to Cape Cod, she became deeply encounter the wintery scene with a fresh perspective, interested in gardening and landscape and began to see succumbing to the river rock for support and strength herself as “part of the web of living beings.”79 She and and noting that they “Don’t even think / a train her husband, Ira Wood, founded the small publishing run through this town anymore.” This suggests a company Leapfrog Press in 1993. transformation, both for the town and for the speaker’s understanding of their place within it. The term Piercy won the Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction “evergreen” means a plant that retains its green leaves as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, throughout the year. Perhaps the speaker in the poem Ann Arbor, and she completed her master’s degree at can also see themselves as part of the evergreen in that Northwestern University. She is the winner of the 1992 they are a sign of life in an otherwise bleak landscape. Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, the Golden Rose Poetry Prize, and a National Endowment for the POETRY: “THE AIR SMELLED Arts award, among others. She has been awarded four honorary doctorates and has published over twenty DIRTY” BY MARGE PIERCY volumes of poetry and close to twenty novels, one play, Marge Piercy: Biography and many works of nonfiction since 1968. Marge Piercy (b. 1936) is a Jewish-American poet, novelist, and memoirist born to a working-class family in Detroit, Michigan, just prior to World War II. She 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 54  SELECTED WORK: “The air smelled dirty” (2017) by Marge Piercy “The air smelled dirty” from ON THE WAY OUT, TURN OFF THE LIGHT: POEMS by Marge Piercy, copyright © 2020 by Marge Piercy. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Everyone burned coal in our neighborhood, soft coal they called it from the mountains of western Pennsylvania where my father grew up and fled as soon as he could, where my Welsh cousins dug it down in the dark. The furnace it fed stood in the dank basement, its many arms upraised like Godzilla or some other monster. It was my job to pull out clinkers Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA and carry them to the alley bin. Mornings were chilly, frost on windows etching magic landscapes. I liked to stand over the hot air registers the warmth blowing up my skirts. But the basement scared me at night. The fire glowed like a red eye through the furnace door and the clinkers fell loud and the shadows came at me as mice scampered. The washing machine was tame but the furnace was always hungry. Analysis of “The air smelled dirty”: Nature, Place, and Memory In Piercy’s poem “The air smelled dirty,” there is a distinctive quality of place. “Everyone burned coal” in the poet’s neighborhood, brought in from the mountains of her father’s Pennsylvania upbringing. Piercy blends poetic imagination with memory and history to tell the story of how coal affected her youth and environment. Coal is the backdrop to her childhood, lingering through generations from her father to her “Welsh cousins” who “dug it down in the dark,” the alliteration of this line places a pulsing, lyrical emphasis on the work her family did in the mines. Piercy’s reference to her cousins being Welsh also signifies the difficult kinds of labor that were afforded to immigrants in the early twentieth century, A coal-burning home furnace and water heater from the early twentieth century. and even now. The fact that her father “fled as soon 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 55 as he could” suggests life in a coal mining town was arduous and undesirable. In the second stanza, the line “The furnace it fed stood in the dank / basement, its many arms upraised / like Godzilla or some other monster” gives the experience a chilling effect that links the coal to devastation through its monstrosity. Combined with the poem’s title, readers get a sense that Piercy’s experience with coal was menacing, particularly at night. Her memory of the furnace as being insatiably hungry for coal with fire that “glowed like a red eye” and shadows and sounds that caused mice to scamper intensifies her relationship to coal, which might be read as the poet foreshadowing the damage the country’s overuse of coal has wrought on the bodies of coal miners as well as on a larger environmental scale. Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA The clinkers, or waste caused by combustion and heating, feature twice in the poem—it is the poet’s responsibility to discard these clinkers. The repetition of the word “clinkers” heightens its importance in the context of the poet’s dread of the coal-fired furnace. On a more global scale, the production of clinkers causes the release of excess CO2, contributing to greenhouse gasses and climate change,80 an issue that Marge Piercy cares about fiercely and that often shows up in her poetry and novels. POETRY: “OUR PURPOSE IN POETRY: OR, EARTHRISE” BY Amanda Gorman recites her inaugural poem, “The Hill We AMANDA GORMAN Climb,” during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Amanda Gorman: Biography Washington, January 20, 2021. Amanda Gorman (b. 1998) was the youngest inaugural By Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Washington D.C, United States - 210120-D-WD757-2531, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/ poet in American history when she read her poem “The index.php?curid=99649528 Hill We Climb” at the 2021 presidential inauguration, espousing messages of unity, hope, justice, and change.81 In a 2021 interview for Time magazine, Gorman has Gorman was also the nation’s first National Youth Poet said she views poetry as: Laureate.82 Gorman, who has a speech impediment, began writing and reciting poetry to help her find her … the lens we use to interrogate the history voice as a young girl.83 Gorman was inspired by the we stand on and the future we stand for. It’s Pakistani activist and Nobel Prize winner, Malala no coincidence that at the base of the Statue Yousafzai to become a youth delegate for the United of Liberty, there is a poem. Our instinct Nations in 2013.84 She later earned a degree in sociology is to turn to poetry when we’re looking to from Harvard; performed poetry honoring nurses, communicate a spirit that is larger than educators, and veterans at the Super Bowl; and authored ourselves. Whenever I’m writing, I’m looking a children’s book called Change Sings: A Children’s at the history of words. The specific history Anthem (2021) as well as a collection of poetry titled of words in the Inaugural poem was: We Call Us What We Carry (2021). have seen the ways in which language has 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 56  been violated and used to dehumanize. speeches of these past leaders to see how “words can How can I reclaim English so we can see be used for good.”87 it as a source of hope, purification and consciousness?85 Gorman’s poetry confronts serious issues facing the world today, including racism, hunger, inequality, Some of her influences include Abraham Lincoln, climate change, illiteracy, and more. She was sixteen Frederick Douglass, Winston Churchill, Yusef years old when she performed “Earthrise” for the Komunyakaa, Sonia Sanchez, Tracy K. Smith, and Climate Reality Leadership Corps in 2018. Phillis Wheatley.86 Gorman is said to have studied SELECTED WORK: “Our Purpose in Poetry: or, Earthrise” (2018) by Amanda Gorman Dedicated to Al Gore and The Climate Reality Project On Christmas Eve, 1968, astronaut Bill Anders Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA Snapped a photo of the earth As Apollo 8 orbited the moon. Those three guys Were surprised To see from their eyes Our planet looked like an earthrise A blue orb hovering over the moon’s gray horizon, with deep oceans and silver skies. It was our world’s first glance at itself Our first chance to see a shared reality, A declared stance and a commonality; A glimpse into our planet’s mirror, And as threats drew nearer, Our own urgency became clearer, As we realize that we hold nothing dearer than this floating body we all call home. We’ve known That we’re caught in the throes Of climactic changes some say Will just go away, While some simply pray To survive another day; For it is the obscure, the oppressed, the poor, Who when the disaster Is declared done, Still suffer more than anyone. Climate change is the single greatest challenge of our time, 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 57 Of this, you’re certainly aware. It’s saddening, but I cannot spare you From knowing an inconvenient fact, because It’s getting the facts straight that gets us to act and not to wait. So I tell you this not to scare you, But to prepare you, to dare you To dream a different reality, Where despite disparities We all care to protect this world, This riddled blue marble, this little true marvel To muster the verve and the nerve To see how we can serve Our planet. You don’t need to be a politician To make it your mission to conserve, to protect, To preserve that one and only home Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA That is ours, To use your unique power To give next generations the planet they deserve. We are demonstrating, creating, advocating We heed this inconvenient truth, because we need to be anything but lenient With the future of our youth. And while this is a training, in sustaining the future of our planet, There is no rehearsal. The time is Now Now Now, Because the reversal of harm, And protection of a future so universal Should be anything but controversial. So, earth, pale blue dot We will fail you not. Just as we chose to go to the moon We know it’s never too soon To choose hope. We choose to do more than cope With climate change We choose to end it— We refuse to lose. Together we do this and more Not because it’s very easy or nice 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 58  But because it is necessary, Because with every dawn we carry the weight of the fate of this celestial body orbiting a star. And as heavy as that weight sounded, it doesn’t hold us down, But it keeps us grounded, steady, ready, Because an environmental movement of this size Is simply another form of an earthrise. To see it, close your eyes. Visualize that all of us leaders in this room and outside of these walls or in the halls, all of us changemakers are in a spacecraft, Floating like a silver raft in space, and we see the face of our planet anew. We relish the view; We witness its round green and brilliant blue, Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA Which inspires us to ask deeply, wholly: What can we do? Open your eyes. Know that the future of this wise planet Lies right in sight: Right in all of us. Trust this earth uprising. All of us bring light to exciting solutions never tried before For it is our hope that implores us, at our uncompromising core, To keep rising up for an earth more than worth fighting for. Analysis of “Earthrise”: Climate Change “Earthrise” is an inspirational poem whose title references the famous photograph of the Earth taken from space on the 1968 Apollo 8 mission. NASA’s crew of astronauts were the first to successfully orbit the moon and return safely to Earth, as well as the first to witness and photograph an earthrise. The crew was comprised of Frank Borman, William (Bill) A. Anders, and James A. Lovell, Jr.88 Gorman’s poem alludes to significant events in American history, especially Bill Anders’ historic photo and President John F. Kennedy’s celebrated speech on his ambitious goal to get America to the moon prior to the end of the decade. The poem is both lyrical and rhythmic, with the rhyme scheme at the end of lines changing throughout the fifteen stanzas, and internal rhymes occur in some Taken by Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders on December 24, places, such as in stanza eight: 1968, while in orbit around the Moon, this photo shows the Earth rising above the lunar horizon. 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 59  Where despite disparities We all care to protect this world, This riddled blue marble, this little true marvel To muster the verve and the nerve To see how we can serve Our planet. You don’t need to be a politician To make it your mission to conserve, to protect, To preserve that one and only home That is ours, To use your unique power To give next generations the planet they deserve. The subject of “Earthrise” is the world’s changing climate. The speaker uses lush and beautiful language to convey a sense of hopefulness about protecting the Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA earth. In stanza one, “A blue orb hovering over the moon’s gray horizon, with deep oceans and silver skies” signals the majesty of the earth from space. At the end of the poem, the speaker brings this image closer to home, personalizing the call to action. In the lines “all of us changemakers are in a spacecraft, floating like a silver raft…we relish the view; we witness its green and brilliant blue, which inspires us to ask, what Author E. M. Forster, shown receiving an honorary doctorate can we do?” the poem’s speaker compares the present from Leiden University in 1954. environmental movement to the Apollo 8 mission By Joop van Bilsen (ANEFO) - Cropped from GaHetNa (Nationaal Archief that inspired earlier generations of Americans. As the NL) Bestandsnummer 093-0977, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia. org/w/index.php?curid=52359568 astronauts saw the Earthrise for the first time from their spacecraft, we too can see the Earth rise (up) in defense of the planet we see in front of us, the teeming green nostalgia, though writers like Forster were early critics and blue a symbol of life that inspires action. of class struggles in England—a topic that featured heavily in his works. SHORT STORY: “THE MACHINE Forster was part of the noted Bloomsbury Group, a STOPS” BY E. M. FORSTER collection of English intellectuals, artists, philosophers, E. M. Forster: Biography and writers that included Virginia and Leonard Woolf Edward Morgan Forster (1879−1970) was an English and John Maynard Keynes. The group contributed to author best known for his novels, especially A Passage Modernism in literature, philosophy, and art, which to India (1924), which was adapted to both theater drew on ideas about “feminism, analytic philosophy, (1960) and film (1984), and Howard’s End (1910), psychoanalysis, macroeconomics, progressive domestic adapted to film in 1992 and again in 2016. He was a arrangements, left-oriented politics, postimpressionist prolific writer during the Edwardian era, penning art, and literary experimentation.”89 various novels, plays, short stories, biographies, and In addition to being a novelist, Forster was a social and one opera libretto. The Edwardian period occurred literary critic who based his critiques on his “acute between the Victorian age and World War I, which at observation of middle-class life”90 in England. His work that time was called the Great War. In the aftermath emphasized a belief that “if men and women were to of the horrors of war, many looked back on the so- achieve a satisfactory life, they needed to keep contact called “golden” era of the Edwardian period with with the earth and to cultivate their imaginations,”91 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 60 balancing both so as not to alienate one sense of being technologies brought about the growth of industry but over the other. In context of the larger industrial boom also changed social roles—especially for women—and of the 1880s, it makes sense that Forster highlighted increased attention to laborers and their rights. notions of technological isolation and overdependence on technology in his works. The advent of new SELECTED WORK: “The Machine Stops” (1909) by E. M. Forster First published in the Oxford and Cambridge Review, November 1909. 1 The Air-Ship Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk — that is all the furniture. Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh — a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs. An electric bell rang. The woman touched a switch and the music was silent. “I suppose I must see who it is”, she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery and it rolled her to the other side of the room where the bell still rang importunately. “Who is it?” she called. Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously. But when she listened into the receiver, her white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said: “Very well. Let us talk, I will isolate myself. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes — for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must deliver my lecture on ‘Music during the Australian Period’.” She touched the isolation knob, so that no one else could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting apparatus, and the little room was plunged into darkness. “Be quick!” she called, her irritation returning. “Be quick, Kuno; here I am in the dark wasting my time.” But it was fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her. “Kuno, how slow you are.” He smiled gravely. “I really believe you enjoy dawdling.” “I have called you before, mother, but you were always busy or isolated. I have something particular to say.” “What is it, dearest boy? Be quick. Why could you not send it by pneumatic post?” “Because I prefer saying such a thing. I want—” “Well?” “I want you to come and see me.” Vashti watched his face in the blue plate. “But I can see you!” she exclaimed. “What more do you want?” “I want to see you not through the Machine,” said Kuno. “I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine.” “Oh, hush!” said his mother, vaguely shocked. “You mustn’t say anything against the Machine.” “Why not?” 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 61  “One mustn’t.” “You talk as if a god had made the Machine,” cried the other. “I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.” She replied that she could scarcely spare the time for a visit. “The air-ship barely takes two days to fly between me and you.” “I dislike air-ships.” “Why?” “I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth, and the sea, and the stars when it is dark. I get no ideas in an air-ship.” “I do not get them anywhere else.” “What kind of ideas can the air give you?” He paused for an instant. “Do you not know four big stars that form an oblong, and three stars close together in the middle of the Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA oblong, and hanging from these stars, three other stars?” “No, I do not. I dislike the stars. But did they give you an idea? How interesting; tell me.” “I had an idea that they were like a man.” “I do not understand.” “The four big stars are the man’s shoulders and his knees. The three stars in the middle are like the belts that men wore once, and the three stars hanging are like a sword.” “A sword?” “Men carried swords about with them, to kill animals and other men.” “It does not strike me as a very good idea, but it is certainly original. When did it come to you first?” “In the air-ship —” He broke off, and she fancied that he looked sad. She could not be sure, for the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people — an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes, Vashti thought. The imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit. Something “good enough” had long since been accepted by our race. “The truth is,” he continued, “that I want to see these stars again. They are curious stars. I want to see them not from the air-ship, but from the surface of the earth, as our ancestors did, thousands of years ago. I want to visit the surface of the earth.” She was shocked again. “Mother, you must come, if only to explain to me what is the harm of visiting the surface of the earth.” “No harm,” she replied, controlling herself. “But no advantage. The surface of the earth is only dust and mud, no life remains on it, and you would need a respirator, or the cold of the outer air would kill you. One dies immediately in the outer air.” “I know; of course I shall take all precautions.” “And besides—” “Well?” She considered, and chose her words with care. Her son had a queer temper, and she wished to dissuade him from the expedition. “It is contrary to the spirit of the age,” she asserted. “Do you mean by that, contrary to the Machine?” “In a sense, but—” 2024–2025 Literature Resource Guide 62  His image in the blue plate faded. “Kuno!” He had isolated himself. For a moment Vashti felt lonely. Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere—buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world. Vashanti’s next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one’s own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early date? — say this day month. To most of these questions she replied with irritation—a growing quality in that accelerated age. She said that the new food was horrible. That she could not visit the public nurseries through press of engagements. That she had no ideas of her own but had just been told one—that four stars and three in the middle were like Granada Hills Charter High School - Granada Hills, CA a man: she doubted there was much in it. Then she switched off her correspondents, for it was time to deliver her lecture on Australian music. The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned; neither Vashti nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a humorous account of music in the pre-Mongolian epoch, and went on to describe the great outburst of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and primæval as were the methods of I-San-So and the Brisbane school, she yet felt (she said) that study of them might repay the musicians of today: they had freshness; they had, above all, ideas. Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes, was well received, and at its conclusion she and many of her audience listened to a lecture on the sea; there were ideas to be got from the sea; the speaker had donned a respirator and visited it lately. Then she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again, and summoned her bed. The bed was not to her liking. It was too large, and she had a