“Green Fire – Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic For Our Time”
Aldo Leopold died of a heart attack while battling a fire on a neighbour’s property on April 21, 1948. He is one of those literary figures better known and much…
Tag: literature of nature
“Nature and culture have been replaced by landscape and literature”: Mark Cocker on the “New Nature Writing”, New Statesman, June 2015
I have previously cited this essay by Mark Cocker on the “New Nature Writing” as exemplified by Robert Macfarlane and Helen McDonald. Have been re-reading it and find, as often…
Appreciating nature in the 6th Century: From “The Consolation of Philosophy”, Boethius
It is often argued that appreciation of nature is a phenomenon of industrial societies. The implication being that “nature” is something that intellectuals and city folk appreciate – not people…
From “The Long, Long Life of Trees”, Fiona Stafford
In spring, you can feel life stirring in the barest twigs and the silhouetted catkins look as if a diminutive duck has run across the sky. One day the…
John Lewis-Stempel on anthropomorphism. From “Meadowland: The Private Life of An English Field”
While I have some misgivings about the “lab coated lobby” part (I suspect that the sneering phenomenon Lewis-Stempel describes doesn’t so much emanate from “science Puritans” as simple cynicism, perhaps…
Robert MacFarlane’s “Landmarks” and the literature of nature
I should love Robert MacFarlane’s “Landmarks”, but it is proving strangely difficult to get through. Normally I reserve any kind of reviewing judgment on books until I have completely finished…
Séamus Sweeney 