Poetry as a Motivation for Realizing a Sustainable Environment: An Ecocritical Perspective of Three Selected Poems for Jane Hirshfield and Marvin Bell

Ecopoetry is concerned with the tendency to attack man-made technology which endangers the balance or stability of the ecosystem and leads to numerous environmental changes. The disposal of industrial wastes as well as plastic pollution affects the life of sea creatures, thus causing what is known as climate change. Carbon dioxide and global warming are the most dangerous factors that lead to the occurrence of phenomena like world floods, hurricanes and decline of Arctic ice. Hence, the importance of writing such realistic poetry which is different from Wordsworth’s Romantic school, one that expresses deep concern about nature is of a main concern. The researcher believes that Jane Hirshfield and Marvin Bell’s ecopoems have anxious contents regarding the planet and call for saving its ecological system. In Hirshfield’s poems, nature is anthropomorphized as the poet is convinced that poetry has the power to induce pivotal change. In the Vedic doctrine of the five elements, the mother earth/ ecosystem involves all the other states of matter which are essential to nurture the life of man and all the other living organisms. Hence, in “Water, Winter, Fire,” Bell exposes an inherent, ecological belief that the natural cycle of death and life is an indication of a bond of cohesion between humans and non-human nature. From an ecocritical perspective, an anthropomorphizing of nature can advocate world attention to preserve the ecosystem and reunite man with nature. Hence, Hirshfield and Bell’s nature poetry has ecocritical motives that can immediately stop anti-nature activities against the environment.