What is most distinctive to me about Ross Gay’s poem “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” is the way that it approaches human engagement with the environment as a collective experience. He portrays a number of scenes in which humans are united in the joy of nature, so much so that unity/community is necessary in finding this joy. This stands out in contrast to the pastoral poem or traditional nature poem in which the narrating voice or central perspective is that of an individual. I think this is telling in determining what makes an ecopoem effective. While many poems, such as “A Prayer to Talk to Animals” by Nickole Brown, are framed in the perspective of an individual and thereby manage to draw the reader in as an experiential poem, they are also isolatory in that they restrict the importance of the environment to a narrower scope. Perhaps when ecopoems try to move the audience to action by trying to persuade the individual to do so for their own sake, they are losing efficacy. Yes, humans are selfish by nature and by evolutionary necessity, but sustainable action grows out of connection to a larger cause.
In Ross Gay’s writing, the call for protection of the environment comes out of the human need for community. He writes that nature “might make you stay alive, even.” I think this not only refers to the need for a flourishing environment but also for communal rejoicement over that environment and the ways in which it sustains community connection. Importantly, Ross Gay’s work touches on the inextricability of environment with community. As Nickole Brown implies, I think, in “A Prayer to Talk to Animals,” when we distance ourselves from nature, we distance ourselves from each other. The narrator is so focused on her phone that they do not take the time to connect with the bird out the window— or with each other. Ross Gay’s writing is an important antidote to this by not only emphasizing the ways in which our environment connects us as humans, but also the ways in which life as a whole— that being all animals, plants, etc— form a very special and essential type of community.
References:
Poets, Academy of American. A Prayer to Talk to Animals by Nickole Brown – Poems | Academy of American Poets. https://poets.org/poem/prayer-talk-animals. Accessed 7 June 2021.
Foundation, Poetry. “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, 30 May 2021, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58762/catalog-of-unabashed-gratitude. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/.
