My book group is reading "Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. I knew it is a famous book about ecology and nature but I had never heard that it is truly passionate, beautiful writing. The version I got for my Kindle includes his excellent sketches and some top-notch introductory comments by the writer Barbara Kingsolver. I realize that the arts of painting and drawing changed radically when photography came along. Before that time, the ability to draw lines and shapes that depicted a face or a scene was highly prized. Now my smartphone camera and my iPad camera can do an excellent job "capturing" a likeness. Nevertheless, Leopold's drawings of wild geese, chipmunks and other parts of nature really take the viewer up close and details for the eye what they look like.
Much the way visual art expanded beyond depiction into fantasy and experimentation with scatter, poetry also began taking new turns. Why should each line have the same number of syllables? Why have rhymes so regularly? Let's experiment. How about if I try to express what I feel? How about if I try to create art that gives you a certain feeling? This sort of expansion and additional goals and purposes have led me to use the term "poetry" for writing that has a strong emotional impact. Sand County Almanac is poetry and does have a strong emotional impact.
Leopold's writing emanates love and admiration for wild plants and animals. I have never vibrated much beyond women and children but clearly some men are enamored of the hills themselves, the trees, the streams and wetlands and their love and fascination are contagious. I am not yet hugging trees or loving wild rabbits and deer but I am closer to getting those who do.
