SCHOLARLY ARTICLE

MAURICIO OSTRIA GONZALEZ

 *

AND I SEE SPIDERS, AND I

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

GRAZE ON THICKETS. . . On the
Ecological Calling of Poetry

Our age can be characterized as the era of the global ecological crisis
understood as a civilizing crisis. Such ecological crisis results from vio-
lent and repetitive misalignments among the interaction of the bio-
sphere and the technological development. This misalignment has
increased exorbitantly along the last three centuries in detriment on the
biosphere. The environmental impacts of human population as well as
their industrial processes have increased since the onset of the
Industrial Revolution, and since twentieth century, the rapid expansion
of the socioeconomic system has gone out of control, In the final
account, the ecosophic problematic is that of the production of human
existence itself in new historical contexts (Guattari 34).
The origin of the crisis must be placed within the underlying logic
of modernity, which distances and antagonizes human beings against
nature, placing them in a relationship of exploiter and exploited. The
truth is that we are part of nature; concomitantly, it is necessary to relo-
cate humans within the ecosystems and also to balance our sense of
belonging to nature with the sense of uniqueness as human beings
within nature. The idea of difference with regard to other living crea-
tures relies on the fully developed self-awareness, our articulated lan-
guage and rationality which characterize human beings, and
paradoxically, the fact that humans have created the so called techno-
science capable of erasing our own species, as well as all living things
on the surface of the Earth. Furthermore, all living things, including

Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 22.2 (Spring 2015) doi:10.1093/isle/isw016

C The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for the
V
Study of Literature and Environment. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
2 I S L E

humans, share a similar evolutionary history on Earth; we all exist

within spatiotemporal limits; we are all finite and vulnerable; we are
all interdependent; we all aspire to self-preservation and we possess an
own belongings of our biological species1 (Riechmann 146).
Summing up, the foundation of the ecological conception is that every-
thing is connected, thus, everything depends on everything. Literary
criticism that addresses the relationship between literature and nature
is called ecocriticism. The basis of this approach relies in understand-
ing that human beings and their natural and social environment form a
complex and inseparable unit, a set of necessaries and dynamic rela-

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

tionships, present at all times and in every singular act. The indigenous
people past and present knew and still know that they had and have a
clear awareness that Earth is the source of every living creature. Only a
living thing can generate life in the most different forms. Therefore,
Earth is the universal Mother . . .; it is not about there is life on Earth,
the Earth itself is alive (tenan y tienen clara conciencia de que la Tierra es
generadora de todos los vivientes. Solamente un ser vivo puede producir vida
en sus mas diferentes formas. La Tierra es, pues, la Madre universal . . . ; no es
que sobre la Tierra haya vida, la Tierra misma esta viva) (Boff). As Chief
Seattle said: This we know: the Earth does not belong to man, man
belongs to Earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us
all. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.2 Therefore, ecocriti-
cism or ecological criticism attempts to integrate textual productions
into a greater system than traditional literary, cultural and historical
series, displacing cultural productions towards a new ecocentric envi-
ronment which inserts the artwork and its author into the matrix that
supports them. As pointed out by Donald Worster, this appraisal car-
ries a strong ethical character.
In other words, it implies assuming an approach that recovers the con-
nection between nature and culture, and to make visible the materiality of
the interrelationships and integration of the basis and elements that
ensure life on planet Earth. Within this approach, the nexus between liter-
ature and nature represents the basic union between humans and the nat-
ural environment. It is a connection that allows combining the external,
mythical, and sacred world of nature with the subjectivity and the social
world. Because, as pointed out effectively by Binns, the ecological dis-
ruption is also a linguistic and literary disruption. Apparently timeless
symbols (the ocean, the river, the air, the forest, the soil) as well as hardly
renewable discourses are being contaminated and depleted, at the same
rate as planetary predation (el trastorno ecologico no deja de ser un tras-
torno lingustico y literario mas profundo. Grandes smbolos aparentemente
intemporales (el mar, el ro, la lluvia, el aire, el bosque, la tierra) se estan
 And I see spiders, and I graze on thickets. . . 3

contaminando y agotando, como discursos difcilmente renovables, al ritmo de la

depredacion planetaria) (11). Furthermore, linked with the literary phe-
nomenon, the understanding of subjectivity as a bio-socio-cultural com-
plex and nature as a humanized category is increasingly growing, as
symbolic capital in power relationships and as a focused notion of human
and non-human interactions.
Because of its functional nature, articulated on the basis of profound
fusions (oneself and others, oneself and the world, oneself and language),
poetry has always been prone to represent the relationships of human
beings with nature supported by the intimate communications, in deep

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

identity links, in the denial of the contradictions, and in the plurality of
senses. Based on rhythms and images, poetry does not recognize differ-
ences between beings, but only the intensities, analogies, and contigu-
ities. Hence, true poetry can never be anti-ecological. In full agreement
with this idea, Octavio Paz proposes a genuine utopian solidarity under
an ecological nature. In fact, the essayist/poet aspires to a solidarity that
goes from the stones and trees to the animals and the men (de las pied-
ras y los arboles a los animales y los hombres PAZ, La otra 65):
Stars, hills, clouds, trees, birds, crickets, men: each one in their
world, each one a world and yet all these worlds correspond. Only if
the feeling of brotherhood with nature appears among us, we can
defend the existence of life. It is not impossible: brotherhood is a word
which belongs equally to the liberal and socialist tradition, to the scien-
tific and to the religious. (Paz, Banquet Speech)
And also, as Paz pointed out: The poem Mirror of the cosmic
brotherhood is a model about what the human society could be. Facing
the destruction of Nature, it shows the brotherhood among the stars
and the particles, among the chemical substances and the consciences
(Espejo de la fraternidad cosmica, el poema es un modelo de lo que podra ser
la sociedad humana. Frente a la destruccion de la naturaleza, muestra la her-
mandad entre los astros y las partculas, las substancias qumicas y las con-
ciencias) (Paz, La otra 138).
Poetic language establishes the being through the image it creates.
That is, by virtue of its imaginary originality, every truly poetic image,
inaugurates a voice, pointing at the origin of languages. The poetic
image, writes Bachelard, places us on the origin of the speaking
being (The Poetics, xxviii). In a poem, an image arises multiple associa-
tions, triggering the possibility to evoke signs and is related with ele-
ments which characterize the personal biography and views of the
poet, psychological and cultural aspects; literary and artistic tenden-
cies; and ideals, and ideologies of all kinds. The complex process that
characterizes the construction of a poem and the motivated and inti-
mate link which is established between the natures of the created
4 I S L E

images, the personal sensibility of the speaker, and the cultural terri-
tory, in which the inaugural visions are rooted, is of particular rele-
vance and significance. In other words, if the poetic image, due to its
creative capacity, makes poetry appear as a phenomenon of freedom,
then the poem, due to its contextual links and images engendered,
becomes a testimony of identity: not just personal (i.e. from the poet
views) butas I emphasize herecultural. The views that poems cre-
ate are substantially related with the personal sensitivity of the poet,
nurtured within a cultural territory (life experiences, geography, social
behaviors, education, etc.). This link allows us to talk about regional or

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

national cultures beyond the biographic or accidentally historical cir-
cumstances experienced by the poet. Moreover, from a linguistic point
of view, the poetic image always implies a mechanism of rupture or
semantic impertinence that, evaluated from an ecocritical perspective,
shows that the fundamental process of the humannonhuman, more
than human interactions, are equalized through all the diverse catego-
ries, therefore, can be replaced, breaking the proper grammar and
semantic paradigms of the pragmatic speeches and hence the ecologi-
cal calling of poetry, in which everything is related.
Therefore, the Latin American poetic exercise, even before the emer-
gence of contemporary ecological movements, recognizes, among
myth and prophecy, the necessary interrelation of all the elements and
human beings. Long before starting to talk about ecology, significant
poetic texts that are concerned with the natural environment or in
which nature plays a key role as the foundation of the world were pub-
lished. This applies, for instance, to poems by Gabriela Mistral, Ramo n

Lopez Velarde, Cesar Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, Pablo de Rokha,
Humberto Daz Casanueva, Juvencio Valle, Nicolas Guillen, Efran
Barquero, Andres Sabella, Jorge Teillier, to mention only a few clear
examples.3 One of the fundamental texts is Nerudas unforgettable
Entrada a la madera:
Scarcely with my reason, with my fingers/with slow
waters indolently swamped,/I fall into the realm of for-
get-me-nots,/ . . ./I fall into the shadows, to the core,/of
shattered things,/and I see spiders, and I graze on thick-
ets/of secret inconclusive woods,/and I pace through
soaked, uprooted fibers/at the living heart of matter and
silence.//Oh lovely matter, oh rose of dry wings,/ . . ./
arriving at your mysterious essence.//I see the course of
your petrified currents,/the growth of frozen, interrupted
hands./I hear your oceanic vegetation/rustlingshaken
by night and fury/and I feel the leaves dying inwardto
 And I see spiders, and I graze on thickets. . . 5

the very core/fusing their green substances/to your aban-

doned immobility.//Pores, veins, rings of sweetness,/
weight, silent temperatures,/arrows piercing your fallen
soul,/beings asleep in your thick mouth/shreds of sweet
consumed pulp,/ . . ./gather to me, to my measureless
dream,/fall into my bedroom where night falls/and end-
lessly falls like broken water/and bind me to your life
and to your death//and to your docile substances,/to
your dead neutral doves,/and let us make fire, and
silence, and sound,/and let us burn, and be silent, and

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

bells.
Con mi razon apenas, con mis dedos,/con lentas aguas lentas
inundadas,/caigo al imperio de los nomeolvides,/. . ./caigo en la
sombra, en medio/de destruidas cosas,/y miro ara~ nas, y apa-
ciento bosques/de secretas maderas inconclusas,/y ando entre
humedas fibras arrancadas/al vivo ser de substancia y silen-
cio.//Dulce materia, oh rosa de alas secas,/. . ./llegando a tu
materia misteriosa./Veo moverse tus corrientes secas,/veo crecer
manos interrumpidas,/oigo tus vegetales oceanicos/crujir de
noche y furia sacudidos,/y siento morir hojas hacia adentro,/
incorporando materiales verdes/a tu inmovilidad desampar-
ada./Poros, vetas, crculos de dulzura,/peso, temperatura silen-
ciosa,/flechas pegadas a tu alma cada,/seres dormidos en tu
boca espesa,/polvo de dulce pulpa consumida,/. . ./venid a m, a
mi sue~ no sin medida,/caed en mi alcoba en que la noche cae/y
cae sin cesar como agua rota,/y a vuestra vida, a vuestra
muerte asidme,/a vuestros materiales sometidos,/a vuestras
muertas palomas neutrales,/y hagamos fuego, y silencio, y
sonido,/y ardamos, y callemos, y campanas. (Neruda,
Residencia 25761)
Identified with the movement of water, the speaker falls into the
empire of forget-me-nots and seeks the identification with the lovely
matter, with his scarcely reason; then he sees, and hears, and feels
empowered by natural life in its intimacy of sweet consumed pulp to
conclude in an apostrophic movement (gather to me) which tends to
the merge of itself and the wet soil in the eternal process of life and
death, and let us burn, and be silent, and bells.4
From an ecocritical perspective, Nerudas poetry is clearly governed
by the imagination of water in opposition, for example, to the poetry
by Gabriela Mistral, whose dominant element is the soil, or in opposi-
tion to the works by Vicente Huidobro or Pablo de Rohka, where air
and fire, respectively, constitute the imaginary axis.5 In fact, since its
6 I S L E

beginnings up to his Residencia en la Tierra Nerudas poetry is character-

ized by an increasing process of formal and visionary complexity
(hermetism, in Amado Alonsos words), an immersion into the deep
waters of individual and cosmic existence, saturated with dense dark-
ness, correlative to a certain depressive temper, pessimism, dominated
by feelings of sadness, melancholy, loneliness as recognized repeti-
tively by Neruda himself. In Tentativa del hombre infinito, Neruda states:
that book of mine proceeds, as almost all my poetry, from the gloomi-
ness of the being which goes step by step encountering obstacles to
elaborate their way with them (ese libro mo procede, como casi toda mi

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

poesa, de la oscuridad del ser que va paso a paso encontrando obstaculos para
elaborar con ellos su camino) (Neruda, Tentativa 18082). This dark,
dense, complex, poetry is linked, I believe, to the imaginary nature pre-
vailing in it. Indeed, the poetic world, as an imaginary system built by
such writing, is rooted in Southern Chiles natural environment:
I will start to say, about the days and years of my
childhood, that my only unforgettable character was
the rain. . . The rain fell on threads like long needles
of glass that shattered on the roofs, or arrived in
transparent waves against the Windows, and each
one was a ship that hardly reached port in that ocean
of winter. . . In front of my house the rain became an
immense sea of mud. . . From those lands, from that
mud, from that silence, I have gone out to walk, to
sing around the world.
Comenzare a decir, sobre los das y a~ nos de mi infancia,
que mi u nico personaje inolvidable fue la lluvia. . . . La
lluvia caa en hilos como largas agujas de vidrio que se
rompan en los techos, o llegaban en olas transparentes
contra las ventanas, y cada una era una nave que
difcilmente llegaba a puerto en aquel oce ano de
invierno. . . . Frente a mi casa la lluvia se convirtio en un
inmenso mar de lodo . . . De aquellas tierras, de aquel
barro, de aquel silencio, he salido yo a andar, a cantar por
el mundo. (Neruda, Confieso 1011)
Regarding Nerudas inaugural experience: It began with endless
beaches or matted hills a communication between my soul, that is to
say, between my poetry and the loneliest land of the world. From this
many years ago, but that communication, that revelation, that cove-
nant with the space has continued to exist in my life (Se comenzo por
infinitas playas o montes enmara~ nados una comunicacion entre mi alma, es
 
decir, entre mi poesa y la tierra mas solitaria del mundo. De esto hace muchos
 And I see spiders, and I graze on thickets. . . 7

nos, pero esa comunicacion, esa revelacion, ese pacto con el espacio ha contin-
a~
uado existiendo en mi vida; Neruda, Confieso 24).
Gaston Bachelard correctly claims that the place in which one is
born is less an extension than a matter (Bachelard, El agua 18).
Because of that, Nerudas poetry must be articulated as fluid and vege-
tal: I grew soaked with natural waters/like the mollusk on marine
phosphorus. . . the green rhythm that in the most hidden/build up a
transparent building,/. . . and then/I felt that I was beating like that:
that my singing grows with water (Crec empapado en aguas naturales/
como el molusco en fosforo marino. . . el ritmo verde que en lo mas oculto/

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

levanto un edificio transparente,/. . . y luego/sent que yo lata como aquello:
que mi canto creca con el agua) (Neruda, Memorial 164). The inhabitants
of this world are rain, rivers, oceans, trees with all their leaves and
roots, rotting woods teeming with tiny throbbing life, and humans that
are in some way amphibians. From the beginning, Nerudas poetry
found its matter in water and forests. That is, the matter that Neruda
yearns during its exile and in which he wants to return until reach the
nest of the rain (hasta llegar al nido de la lluvia) (Neruda, Canto 214).
The rainy and cold forest with its multitude of roots and thickets,
lagoons, puddles, and muddy torrents, with its cycles of deaths and
resurrections, constitutes the substance and the imaginary order in
Nerudas poetry. That landscape, vivid and dreamlike, stands in the
deep imaginary system that regulates semantic relations. Such land-
scape provides diverse themes and structures with specific, yet varied
density, rendering Nerudas loyalty to his southern roots: The lands of
the border put their roots on my poetry and they never have been able
to leave of it. My life is a long pilgrimage that always turns, that always
return to the austral forest, to the lost forest (Las tierras de la frontera
metieron sus races en mi poesa y nunca han podido salir de ella. Mi vida es
una larga peregrinacion que siempre da vueltas, que siempre retorna al bosque
austral, a la selva perdida) (Neruda, Memorial 219).6
The imaginary regency of water in Nerudas poetry not only
explains the tendency of continuous transformation of the world (con-
sider Residencia en la tierra) but the swinging nature of Nerudas images,
characters and poetic voice, as well as the continuum presence of
death. Bachelard states, Water is really the transitional element. . . The
being consecrate to the water is a being in vertigo. It dies at every
minute, without stop some of its substances collapses. The daily
death. . . is the death of water. The water always runs, the water always
falls, always concludes in its horizontal death. . . the sorrow of water is
infinite (El agua es realmente el elemento transitorio. . . El ser consagrado
al agua es un ser en el vertigo. Muere a cada minuto, sin cesar algo de su sus-
tancia se derrumba. La muerte cotidiana. . . es la muerte del agua. El agua
8 I S L E

corre siempre, el agua cae siempre, siempre concluye en su muerte horizon-

tal. . . la pena del agua es infinita) (Bachelard, El agua 15). This movement
toward death is expressed earlier in his best known poem from
Nerudas first book, Farewell, from Crepusculario (1923): I love the
sailors love/which kiss and go//One night they sleep with death/on the
seabed (Amo el amor de los marineros/que besan y se van//Una noche se
acuestan con la muerte/en el lecho del mar) (Neruda, Crepusculario 32).
Precisely, in the first poem of this early book the poet states: my voice
is unleashed as the water in the fountain (se desata mi voz, como el agua
en la fuente) (Neruda, Crepusculario 11).

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

The idyllic stages of Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada,
certainly Nerudas best known and most read book, were created near
the seashore shaded by trees: Ah vastness of pines, murmur of waves
breaking; Here I love you/in the dark pines the wind disentangles
itself; under twilights in autumn in which my words rained over you,
stroking you, and the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture
(Ah vastedad de pinos, rumor de olas quebrandose; Aqu te amo/en los
oscuros pinos se desenreda el viento, en oto~ nos crepusculares, en que mis pala-
bras llovieron sobre ti acariciandote, y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el
roco) (Neruda, Veinte 21, 97, 77, 108). Later in Estravagario (1958), the
poet complains of having lost his primordial territory: I lost the rain
and the wind/and what do I win, I ask to myself/Because I lost the
green shade/sometimes I drown and I died:/it is my soul which is not
happy/and seeks down my shoes/worn or lost things./Maybe that sad
land/it moves on me like a ship;/but I have changed the planet.//The
rain does not recognize me anymore (Yo perd la lluvia y el viento/y que
he ganado, me pregunto?/Porque perd la sombra verde/a veces me ahogo y me
muero:/es mi alma que no esta contenta/y busca bajo mis zapatos/cosas gasta-
das o perdidas./Tal vez aquella tierra triste/se mueve en m como un navo;/
pero yo cambie de planeta.//La lluvia ya no me conoce) (Neruda,
Estravagario 262). The examples would be endless. It is enough will
remember his posthumous book El mar y las campanas.
Several Latin American poets have assumed a militant stance to
denounce and resist the policies and the attacks against the natural
environment. This is, for example, the case of Nicanor Parra, Ernesto
Cardenal, Pablo Antonio Cuadra, Homero Aridjis, Oscar  Hahn,
7

Gonzalo Millan, Jose Emilio Pacheco, Giconda Belli, Roberto Juarroz,
Rau  l Zurita, Juan Pablo Riveros, Clemente Riedemann, and Rosabety
Mu~ noz, among others.
Among Chilean poets, due to his development of anti-poetry and
the incorporation of anti-poetic weapons to assume the defense of the
Planet, developing his very particular ecopoetry, Nicanor Parra is,
undoubtedly, an ecopoet.8 Reusing well-known collocations (phrases/
 And I see spiders, and I graze on thickets. . . 9

set phrases, slogans, common places), modifying cites with an ironic

and parodic intention, recycling advertisements,9 translocating oral
expressions (popular, vulgar, colloquial, regional/local), Parra produ-
ces renewed ecologic meaning:
enough of apocalyptic prophecies/we already
know THAT THE WORLD IS OVER///
CATASTROPHIST?/of course/but MODERATE!///
Good news:/the Earth will recover in a million/
years/It is us who will disappear.//Childhood memo-
ries:/the trees did not have shapes of furniture yet/

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

and chicken circulated raw through the land-
scape.///We no longer ask for bread/roof/nor a
coat//we settle for some/air/EXCELENCE!///DEAR
STUDENTS./bye dear students/and now lets defend
the last black neck/swans that are left in this coun-
try/kicking/ . . . punching/ . . . whatever comes:/
Poetry will thank us
basta de profecas apocalpticas/ya sabemos QUEL

MUNDO SEACAB O///CATASTROFISTA?/claro que s/
pero MODERADO!///Buenas Noticias:/la tierra se recu-
pera en un millon/de a~nos/Somos nosotros los que desa-
parecemos.//Recuerdos de infancia:/los arboles a u n no
tenan forma de muebles/y los pollos circulaban crudos x
el paisaje.///Ya no pedimos pan/techo/ni abrigo//nos con-
formamos con un poco de/aire/EXCELENCIA!///
ESTIMADOS ALUMNOS./adios estimados alumnos/y
ahora a defender los u ltimos cisnes decuello/negro que
van quedando en este pas/a patadas/ . . . a combos/ . . . a
lo que venga:/La poesa nos dara las gracias. (Parra 149
58)
Certainly, recycling expressions, phrases, texts of all kinds appears
as the most appropriate resource as pointed out by Angeles Perez
Lopez to express Parras ecological vocation. Such a poetic language
reconversion is closely linked to the critic conscience that the anti-
poet stands regarding the erosion of the planet, the depletion of natural
resources and the sustainable growth as the only plausible future
pez 7077). One of the most remarkable examples related to
(Perez Lo
this reconversion is the recycling of the first two lines of the Chilean
National anthem, Pure Chile is your blue sky/pure breezes that blow
across you, which Parra merges with expressions that not only break
down the solemnity and seriousness of the anthem but turns them into
10 I S L E

a joke, a nonsensical statment, Pure Chile is your blue sky/ecological

joke/pure breezes that blow across/Come on! (Puro Chile es tu cielo
azulado/chiste ecologico/puras brisas te cruzan tambien/>vai a seguir?).
(Parra, Poesa 161)
Parras ecological complaint is associated with rejection to consum-
erism and free-market practices; indeed, his ecopoems are included in
his Poesa poltica:
What did Milton Friedman tell/to the poor alacalufes?/
Lets buy lets buy/that the world is going to end!///
DEMOGRAPHIC EXPLOTION/PLUNDERING OF

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

NATURE/COLLAPSE OF THE ENVIRONMENT/vices
of the consumerist society/that we can not continue toler-
ate:/everything must be changed from the root!///As its
name indicates/Capitalism is damned/to the capital sen-
tence:/unforgivable ecological crimes/and the bureau-
cratic socialism/it does even worst.///CONSUMERISM.
splurge/waste/snake swallow its own tail
>Que le dijo Milton Friedman/a los pobrecitos alacalufes?/ A
comprar a comprar/quel mundo se vacabar!///EXPLOSION 

DEMOGRAFICA/SAQUEO DE LA NATURALEZA/
COLAPSO DEL MEDIO AMBIENTE/vicios de la sociedad de
consumo/que no podemos seguir tolerando:/hay que cambiarlo
todo de raz!///Como su nombre lo indica/el Capitalismo esta
condenado/a la pena capital:/crmenes ecologicos imperdonables/
y el socialismo burocratico/no lo hace nada de peor tampoco.///
CONSUMISMO. derroche/despilfarro/serpiente que se traga su
propia cola. (Parra 15154)
As it can be appreciated, the antipoetic resources remain the same:
discursive heterogeneity, employment of intrinsic procedures of oral
language and popular urban writing, rupture of canonical speeches,
irony, and parody. Nevertheless, this time, the speaker is not just the
sniper of ANTI-POETRY, artifacts, and jokes, but a prophet defending
Earth, reporting on its destruction as well as that of human beings.
Parra is the tribes poet who feels himself as part of an endangered
community, it says partner read eco-partner/compromise ecom-
promise constitution/lets fight for an econstitution.///
PEDESTRIANS//Anonymous heroes/of/the/ecology (dice compa~ nero
lease ecompa~nero/compromiso ecompromiso constitucion/hay que luchar x
una econstitucion.///PEATONES//Heroes anonimos/de/la/ecologa)
(Parra, Poesa 14953).
 And I see spiders, and I graze on thickets. . . 11

It is likely that among the literary works of Mapuche writers we can

find the most persuasive testimonies and the most endearing resistance
against the aggressive predation of globalization, as well as a strong
defense of traditions and endangered territories against the advance-
ment of so called progress. See these verses from Leonel Lienlaf: The
life of tree/invade my life/I started feeling a tree/and I understood its
sadness./I start crying for my leaves,/my roots,/while a bird/fell asleep
in my branches/waiting that the wind/disperse its wings./I felt a tree/
because the tree was my life (La vida del arbol/invadio mi vida/comence
a sentirme arbol/y entend su tristeza./Empece a llorar por mis hojas,/mis

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

races,/mientras un ave/se dorma en mis ramas/esperando que el viento/dis-
persara sus alas./Yo me senta arbol/porque el arbol era mi vida) (99).
In these verses, a dynamic which begins from the tree (not from the
speaker) is expressed, and therefore, the tree is the active element (The
life of the tree/invade my life). This is how total identification with tree
life is reached. It is such that the speaker and the tree are no longer two
(myself and the tree/the tree and myself) but a unit: a single being that
inhabits the same life, the same feelings, the same sensations, even the
same understanding. The fusion process is briefly described without
adjectives and complex grammar constructions, suggesting the orality
(oral tradition) of Mapudungu n (the language of the Mapuche people)
and the Mapuche culture. At the beginning the process is punctual and
conclusive (the speech is characterized by the use of the past tense); then
it becomes continuous and enduring: the sentences are constructed with
forms of gerund and past tense (indicative and subjunctive).
In other verses, the aggression from winkas (Spanish and Chilean
people) affects either humans (I run to see my people/to my blood/but
they are already lying on the ground; corro a ver a mi gente/a mi san-
gre/pero ya estan tendidos sobre el suelo) as well as Earth (wounding
mortally the Earth; hiriendo de muerte la tierra), in which the sorrow
of a divided heart is extended by the story in a process of death that
continues and that surprises the speaker lost between words-tears:
Descend screaming/they over the meadow/whistling
through the marshes/I run to see my people/to my
blood/but they are already lying/on the ground/
above them pass the winkas/wounding mortally the
Earth/dividing my heart//I went in looking for my
warm/To my burning house . . ./Listen to the air
explaining it//The years are passing,/The nest are
passing over the fire/The Earth is passing/And I am
already loosing among the words/Listen to talk to
my tears.
12 I S L E

Bajan gritando/ellos sobre los campos/silbando por los

esteros/corro a ver a mi gente/a mi sangre/pero ya estan
tendidos/sobre el suelo/sobre ellos pasan los winkas/hir-
iendo de muerte la tierra/dividiendo mi corazon//Entre en
busca de mi calor/A mi casa ardiendo . . ./Escuchen al aire
explicarlas//Estan pasando los a~nos,/Estan pasando los

nidos sobre el fuego/Est a pasando la tierra/Y ya me estoy
perdiendo entre las palabras/Escuchen hablar a mis
lagrimas. (Lienlaf 37)
Likewise, Elicura Chihuailaf, conscious of his bicultural situation

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

and the hybridism of his poetic work (between the Mapuche tradition
and modernity, between orality and writing; between a poetic conceiv-
ing rooted on mythical and utopian visions, as results from occidental
historical process and theories) claims the power of the Word and its
essential link with the being and the world. Chihuailaf believes in
poetry as the means to recover the experiences in which the Mapuche
culture can emerge, sieved through personal melancholy, ancient voi-
ces of ancestors and victims, and the cosmic music:
Poetry is the deep whisper/of the murdered/the rumor of
leaves in autumn,/the sadness for the boy that retains the
tongue/but it has lost the soul/The poetry, the poetry,/it is
a gesture, a dream, the landscape/your eyes and my eyes
girl,/ears heart, the same music . . .//And poetry is the
singing of my/Ancestors/the winter day that burns/and
calm/that melancholy so personal.
La poesa es el hondo susurro/de los asesinados/el rumor
de hojas en el oto~no,/la tristeza por el muchacho que con-
serva la lengua/pero ha perdido el alma/La poesa, la
poesa,/es un gesto, un sue~ no, el paisaje/tus ojos y mis
ojos muchacha,/odos corazon, la misma m u sica . . .//Y
poesa es el canto de mis/Antepasados/el da de invierno
que arde/y apaga/esta melancola tan personal.
(Chihuailaf 5961)
At present, poetry written by authors with indigenous heritage
assumes a pivotal role in the acceptance of an ecological consciousness
of Latin American literature. Their varied voices testify the validity of
relevant cultural values related to the worldviews of the ancestral peo-
ple, and also exhibit the process of transculturation that involves pain-
ful identity conflicts, assuming the vanguard of the exemplary
understanding of life on Earth and its defense.
 And I see spiders, and I graze on thickets. . . 13

NOTES

1. Riechmann points out that there are five traits that identify us
with cosmos: the evolutionary history on the Planet, the spatio-
temporal limits, interdependence, the desire for self-preservation,
and to possess an own biological belongings which enriches the
biodiversity (146).
2. Though the authenticity of the text is under discussion, apparently
it is an oral discourse transcribed and subsequently modified, the
message still contains a deep truth. Fragment taken from Barefoots

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

World.
3. I have developed those themes in several articles. See some works
in Works Cited.
4. In fact, Neruda is one of the first ecologist poets with his text
Ode to erosion in the province of Malleco. See Araya (2006).
5. It is interesting that for the construction of their respective lyrical
worlds, the so-called big four founders of the Chilean poetry of
the twentieth century so clearly share the four basic material sub-
stances with which imagination operates.
6. It is so, that when Neruda recreates the poetic work of a popular
bard, settler of the Pampa, he imagines it as a process of re-vege-
tation, it became into water by the eyes, / and by the hands
became into roots,/until it was transplanted again where he was/
before being, before it germinate/the territory, between the poor
stones (fue haciendose agua por los ojos,/y por las manos se fue
haciendo races,/hasta que lo plantaron de nuevo donde estuvo/antes de
ser, antes de que brotara/del territorio, entre las piedras pobres;
Neruda Canto 240).
7. Please see the excellent work by Galindo (2004).
8. It is true that we can track Parras concern about environment in
earlier poems. Cf. Carrasco.
9. The concept is studied quite suitably by Lo pez Perez.

W O R K S C I T E D


Araya, Juan Gabriel. Etica, poltica y poetica: Hacia una lectura ecocrtica de
Pablo Neruda. Revista de Crtica Literaria Latinoamericana 6364 (2006):
25363.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Trans. Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1994.
. El agua y los sue~nos. Ensayo sobre la imaginacion de la materia. Mexico:
Fondo de Cultura Econo mica (FCE), 1978.
14 I S L E

Binns, Niall. Presentacio n a Acercamientos ecocrticos a la literatura

hispanoamericana. Anales de Literatura Hispanoamericana 33 (2004): 1113.
Web.
Boff, Leonardo. Las buenas razones del socialismo a partir de la moderna
cosmologa. America Libre 18. Web.
Carrasco, Ivan. Nicanor Parra: la escritura antipoetica. Santiago: Universitaria,
1990.
Chihuailaf, Elicura. De sue~ nos. Santiago: Universitaria/
nos azules y contrasue~
Cuarto Propio, 2000.

Galindo, Oscar. Distopa y apocalipsis en la poesa de Oscar  Hahn y
Gonzalo Millan. Anales de Literatura Hispanoamericana 33 (2004): 6576.

Downloaded from http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidad de Concepcion on May 12, 2016

Guattari, Felix. The Three Ecologies. Trans. Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton.
London: The Athlone Press, 2000.
Lienlaf, Leonel. Se ha despertado el ave de mi corazon. Santiago: Universitaria,
1990. Print
Neruda, Pablo. Algunas reflexiones improvisadas sobre mis trabajos.
Mapocho 2.3 (1964): 18082. Web.
. Canto general. Buenos Aires: Seix Barral, 1993.
. Confieso que he vivido. Madrid: Barcelona, Argos Vergara, 1979.
. Crepusculario. Santiago: Nascimento, 1971.
. Tentativa del hombre infinito. Santiago: Orbe, 1964. Print
. Estravagario. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1972.
. Memorial de Isla negra. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1978.
. Residencia en la tierra. Madrid: Catedra, 2000.
. Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada. Buenos Aires: Losada,
1972.
Ostria Gonzalez, Mauricio. Una lectura ecocrtica de textos huidobrianos.
Anales de Literatura Chilena 9 (2008): 22134.
. Globalizacio n, ecologa y literatura. Aproximacio n ecocrtica a textos
literarios latinoamericanos. Kipus 27 (2010): 13850. Web
. Notas sobre ecocrtica y poesa chilena. Atenea 502 (2010): 18191.
. El cosmos exaltado de Ternura. Atenea 508 (2013): 18796.
. La cineraria en la niebla. Acerca de la poetica bombaliana. Anales de
literatura Chilena 20 (2013): 10115.
Parra, Nicanor. Poesa poltica. Santiago: Bruguera, 1983.
Paz, Octavio. Banquet Speech. nobelprize.org. Web.
. La otra voz. Obras completas I. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg / Crculo de
Lectores, 1999.
Perez Lo 
pez, Mara Angeles. La antipoesa de Nicanor Parra (poesa en tiem-
pos de zozobra). Paginas en blanco. Nicanor Parra. Madrid: U de
Salamanca / Patrimonio Nacional, 2001. 9109.
Riechmann, Jorge. Un mundo vulnerable. Ensayos sobre ecologa, etica y
tecnociencia Madrid, Los Libros de Catarata, 2001.
Worster, Donald. Transformaciones de la Tierra: Una antologa mnima de Donald
Worster. Trans. Guillermo Castro. Panama: Ed. Guillermo Castro. Web.