State of the Planet

This poem was really hard to get into. The rhythm of it is also really hard to get. This kind of poetry is at the bottom of my list of texts we have read for this class. To help me try, key word, try to understand it I did some preliminary research. Throughout this poem, Hass repeatedly refers to Lucretius who was a Roman poet and philosopher who wrote a poem called On the Nature of the Universe. I did some research on this poem as well and found out that Lucretius was trying to discredit the belief that the gods created the world and universe or interfered in anyway. He presented evidence that the universe could be explained by natural phenomena. Lucretius said, “the regular but purposeless motions and interactions of tiny atoms in empty space.” The gods had nothing to do with it. In my research it seems to me that Hass believes that Lucretius presented this in his poem. The following passage seems to be his basis:

The book will try to give the child the wonder of how, in our time, we understand life cam to be: Stuff flung off from the sun, the molten core still pouring sometimes rivers of black basalt across the earth from the old fountains of its origin. A hundred million years of clouds, sulfurous rain. The long cooling. There is no silence in the world like the 

silence of rock before life was.

Hass, in this verse, portrays himself as an evolutionist. I could not find any support to prove that he is. But I picked up on evolutionists’ tones and this is where I got my conclusion. Another passage seems to confirm my conclusion.

Cells divided and reproduced. From where? Why? Then bacterium grew green pigment. That was the essential miracle.