An Artist’s Environment: Using Nature to Examine the Self through Writing

Abstract

This study aims to explore the role of the human self in nature poetry by asking how poets use the natural world as the context for examination of the self. Through close readings of Robert Hass’s poem “On Squaw Peak” and Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “Pale Rider,” this essay hones in on nature as setting, subject matter, and inspiration for the two poems. Beginning with the lens of craft, this essay then addresses the role nature plays for the speaker in each poem, and culminates with a discussion of how the inclusion of nature in a poem can lead to an experience of “poetic transcendence.”