Canadian Ecopoetics: The Paradox of Language
by Mackenzie Pereira
Throughout his collection of poems, Don McKay suggests that there are inherent limitations to language, and that they constrain the articulation of nature and natural history. In his preface to Angular Unconformity, McKay defines the geological term titling his book as “a border between two rock sequences, one lying at a distinct angle to the other, which represents a significant gap – often millions of years – in the geological record” (“A Note on the Title” 9). Accordingly, nature and the human lexicon are implied as two rock sequences lying at angles to each other, vanishing history at their intersection. McKay’s poetry will be oriented within the genre of Canadian ecopoetry using George Elliott Clarke’s Whylah Falls and Sky Dancer / Louise B. Halfe’s Bear Bones & Feathers as context. Clarke’s and Halfe’s poetry reveal how Canadian literary frameworks ill-accomodate the narratives of minority groups. Their works insist on an interconnectedness between the cultural histories of Black and Indigenous people, respectively, and Canadian landscapes. Therefore, the difficulty in expressing cultural truths is directly reflective of a difficulty in expressing truths of nature. This essay will examine all three works in the lens of American literary critic Lawrence Buell’s first tenet of ecopoetry: “The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history” (Buell 7). As McKay wrestles with the indirectness of metaphor and the anthropocentricity of names, a paradox begins to take shape within the ecopoetic agenda: language is vital to describe the essence of nature, yet simultaneously insufficient.
Metaphors are paradoxical because they describe a subject by describing something that the subject is not. They can be thought of as “a breaking and a joining – a hinge” (Dickinson 36). A fascination with the circuitousness of metaphor is a theme that often arises in McKay’s poetry when he attempts to describe nature. He deliberates “The struggle of language with itself, its sojourn in the wilderness” (“Muskwa Assemblage” 480), exposing an incompatibility between the two. McKay remarks how the beauty of nature inspires him to “Write it down,” but language’s insufficiency makes him “Cross it out” (“Muskwa Assemblage” 480). As Adam Dickinson explains in his article on lyric ethics, “the nonhuman is approached through anthropomorphism as a kind of material metaphoricity, as a thing that is contingently cast in the structures of a logic that is always insufficient” (45). McKay exposes how language does not permit the description of nature without relating it to human experiences. He does this by describing clouds as “dangerous brains” (“Big Alberta Clouds” 328) and a caribou as “a waiter carrying a tray of silence” (“Muskwa Assemblage” 480). McKay even seems to directly attack punctuation, the party whip of language, as he describes antlers as “improbable parentheses” (“Muskwa Assemblage” 480) and the route of a creek as passing “between quotation marks” (“Inhabiting the Map” 250). He indicates an intersection in language where neither the literal nor the fantastical are adequate descriptors of the natural world.
Ecopoetry, among many benefits, offers readers a sense of place so that they feel connected to the landscape. However, in insisting that there remains something untranslatable about nature, McKay is encouraging readers to experience it for themselves. Although humanity’s words are still naive and ill-encompassing, being forced to confront this fact can be humbling and therapeutic. McKay writes that “It’s OK to disappear” (“Finger Pointing at the Moon” 418) because in order to obtain clarity, often old words must “be lost forever, then come back / as beach glass, polished” (“Finger Pointing at the Moon” 418). Appreciation for the natural world still exists within onlookers even if it cannot be recorded. D.M.R. Bentley, in his book The Confederation Group of Canadian Poets, 1880-1897, explains that it is “a common experience that certain scenery has a tendency to lift us out of our habitual condition” (177). By highlighting the limits of metaphor, McKay implies that nature possesses a wisdom that humans can learn from, but not imitate.
Experiencing wordlessness in nature is especially important when considering how the wrong words can often undo or invalidate certain experiences. Much how bioregionalism insists on designating geographical areas for nature to thrive, George Elliott Clarke carves out spaces for Black narratives within Canadian poetry. Whylah Falls is a “collection of poems, prose paragraphs, letters, photographs and fictionalized newspaper clippings” (Wells 1). This quilt of art forms shows that no singular pre-existing literary medium is alone sufficient to portray the essence of Black Nova Scotia. Clarke uses the character Othello Clemence to illustrate how racial injustice is often erased from history because it is not given a voice. When Othello is fatally assaulted and shot, “His history / … / stops on bloodied gravel / While silence whines in the legislature” (“The Lonesome Death of Othello Clemence” 118). The crime of racism is multifarious; it is more than the murderous action itself. Systemic oppression disallows productive steps toward progress because it does not acknowledge any wrongdoing. Clarke writes: “The sound of the blast ricochets later in unexpected places. It is heard when S.S.S. is acquitted of the murder charge” (“The Argument” 107). Clarke’s story emphasizes how the colonial-centric state of Canadian literature prevents Black Canadians from seeing their lineage reflected in their country’s biography. Language has the power to define an individual’s worldview, since “everyone uses words to create a truth he or she can trust and live within” (“The Argument” 24).
Black history and the environment are interconnected, as seen by how Clarke uses figurative language to depict food and music. Descriptions of Cora’s “Jarvis County Cuisine” (“How to Live in the Garden” 48) are infused with nature and locally sourced ingredients, demonstrating how natural resources have influenced and enhanced African-Canadian cuisine. Her gumbo is a “miniature sea” and her dandelion wine tastes like “sunlight shining through birch leaves.” Mealtimes bring people together as Cora intones that “The table is a community.” The dishes themselves are vestiges of Cora’s ancestors. She cooks using “the salty recipes of Fundy Acadians” which consider “the starchy diets of South Shore Loyalists, and the fishy tastes of Coloured Refugees.” In Dorothy Wells’ A Rose Grows in Whylah Falls, she writes that “Cora’s cooking is her way of making love, her art, her poetry” (63). With this in mind, Clarke’s description of Cora’s cookbook as a “private bible” (“How to Live in the Garden” 48) emphasizes how history, cuisine, and community are spiritually connected.
Another facet of Clarke’s poetry relates nature with music and history. Pablo’s instrument is a “river guitar” (“Revolutionary Epoch” 119) and Pushkin’s notes are “luscious fruit, heavy with memory and tears” (“Four Guitars” 109). Music is a way for Black Canadians to preserve their narratives. In fact, the souls of many of Clarke’s characters are linked to different instruments through which their voice can be heard. When Othello dies, “his guitar must be splintered upon a rock, freeing the twenty-four pale butterflies trapped behind the strings” (“The Argument” 107). This represents how the memory of Othello’s life is transformed into nature. Because systemic racial oppression often prevents the stories of African-Canadians from being told, validated, and remembered, such transformations are important because they assure a type of authentic preservation within the land. When “Shelley plots a miniature orchard” (“The Argument” 161) at the end of the book, she displays an environmentalism that is culturally motivated. Even if certain experiences are not represented in history books, the land will preserve true events and inform future generations.
Adjacently, Louise B. Halfe’s dissatisfaction with the English language is evidenced in her poetry book Bear Bones & Feathers through her addition of Cree words. Many of her poems are titled in Cree, for example “pâhkahkos” (8) or “nîcimos” (68), instead of English. Additionally, as seen in the first line of her opening poem when Halfe writes “I sleep with sihkos” (“Bone Lodge” 1), Halfe often uses Cree words to describe concepts relating to nature. Words in Cree usually have “nested meanings” (Van Essen 71) that are implied based on context and possess cultural and philosophical connotations. Much of the English vocabulary has developed without attention to Indigenous ideologies. As a result, Halfe cannot authentically describe her journey and identity using English alone. In a review of Halfe’s poetry, University of Alberta professor Angela Van Essen maintains that “in order to understand this book on a deeper level, readers must pay close attention to the nêhiyaw itwêwina (the Cree words) that Louise Halfe uses in her poetry, because these words are deeply rooted in nêhiyaw laws, histories, sacred stories, and ceremonies” (71). A bi-linguistic approach allows “[Halfe’s] people’s history, culture, and spirituality [to] infuse [her] poetics, while remaining universal to our shared human history” (“Foreword” xi).
Further, Halfe shows that her culture is tied to her reserve landscape through depictions of Cree rituals and Indigenous herbal remedies. Medicine that has been made using natural resources is an example of how the landscape can offer physical remediation. Halfe describes the “carrot roots, yarrow, camomile, rat-root, and câhcâmosikan” (“Medicine Bear” 14) which hang in her nôhkom’s workspace. Much like Cora’s cooking, these recipes have been passed down for generations. Since herbs are locally sourced, the upkeep of the surrounding environment is essential to the preservation of Indigenous methods of healing. On the other hand, the landscape can also contribute to spiritual restoration. Halfe describes how traditional dancing brings people closer to the wilderness to form a “beating common lung” (“Spirits” 7). In the poem Bone Lodge, the sweat lodge ceremony that is described is achieved by using natural resources such as rocks, saplings, and water. Purification rituals can remind people of their connection with nature and the land. During this ceremony, Halfe reflects:
I’m meat and bones,
dust and straw,
caterpillars and ants,
hummingbird and crow. (“Bone Lodge” 3)
The anaphora throughout this poem implies that healing and spirituality must be re-examined and maintained repeatedly throughout one's life. Naturally, this can only be made possible if the environment itself is likewise cared for.
Indigenous beliefs emphasize the idea that people’s spirits, through death, transform into the landscape. Halfe’s late nimosôm “bathes in sage or cedar, / sweating through breathing rocks” (“He Has Gone to Ground” 25). In another instance, Halfe’s mother tells her, referring to a nearby creek, that “[her late] Grandma lives in that water” (Grandma’s Apprentice” 22). The present tense for both “bathes” and “lives” imply that her grandparents have not gone, but still exist in an unseen way. Halfe describes her ancestors as eternally present “in the hills / … / laughing the dark” (“Ghost Dance” 2). Her ancestors remain capable of animating the night through knowing laughter, and their “shattered bones” have become the rustling, “clattering” wind. This poem implies that not only are her ancestors preserved in nature, but they are also responsible for creating it. Indigenous beliefs centre around an active history, one that can be found within a land that is alive and dynamic.
In a similar vein, and in consideration of nature’s intricate mysticism, it is reductive to name and compartmentalize landscapes to suit human needs. Geographical demarcations are imposed by humans for convenience, but in truth, the environment is all-spanning. In part one of McKay’s Inhabiting the Map, a body of water is referred to as “Waterbed King” (250). This name perverts the organicism of the river with ideas of commercialism. It is a satirical criticism of how humans are losing the ability to appreciate nature without implicating their own consumer-mindset. According to McKay, the human compulsion to brand landscapes is derived from the need to “satisfy some primal urge in a hyperlinguistic species like ours” (“Muskwa Assemblage” 485). Language is described as a possessive imposition that crams the infinite complexity of the environment into a few words with few connotations: “Nameless mountains, nameless creeks: language abhors such vacuums” (“Muskwa Assemblage” 485).
Naming something implies ownership or creative credit. However, nature predates human existence and, as advocated in Clarke’s and Halfe’s poetry, quite informs culture and identity. It is in reflecting about how he has been shaped by his environment that McKay “contemplate[s] the reverse of paternalistic and colonial nomination” (“Muskwa Assemblage” 485) and instead “imagine[s] being named by a place” (“Muskwa Assemblage” 485). Clarke goes one step further than simply thinking about such a name-reversal when he, in the skin of his character X, refers to Whylah Falls as “Sunflower County” (“Each Moment Is Magnificent” 41). Halfe herself, ahead of McKay, is rather literally named Sky Dancer. It is likely, then, in the spirit of compromise that McKay chose to name the collection of his life’s work after an attribute of the land that inspired it. Nonetheless, the irony still remains that the term “angular unconformity” is etymologically human.
Canadian language and literature are predominantly colonial-centric and ill-equipped to reflect the narratives of minority groups. Louise B. Halfe’s poetry illustrates how Indigenous culture becomes heritage by means of nature. Her bilingualism indicates that Cree words have connotations that better describe nature because of the way Indigenous culture is linked to the environment. George Elliott Clarke’s book steps up to fill a lacuna in Canadian literature. From food to music, and from nature to politics, Clarke emphasizes that the details of the African-Canadian experience are all intricately connected. By showing how their respective histories have evolved with the land, Halfe and Clarke leverage culture as a motive for environmentalism. Finally, Don McKay’s collected poems reflect on his impressions from nature. He figures that some scenery simply cannot be conveyed through the use of metaphor or encapsulated in a name. This failure to articulate means that some of nature’s power will be lost from written history. However, it can still certainly be experienced in the present by those who are willing to listen to the environment. The works of these three ecopoets agree that the land contains history, mystic knowledge, and beauty. They describe the earth as a force that inspires and absolves the cycle of life; Natural history is directly implicated in human history. We see this when Halfe writes:
I am gone
into the wilderness
of the sweat,
bleeding
Rock.
(“ayamihâwina―Old Rock Mother” 3)
And when Clarke writes: “We were born of the stars/ that fell on Nova Scotia” (“Absolution” 175). And when McKay writes: “Blood bone flesh weather water make/ a man” (“Drinking Lake Superior” 249). Although language constrains these poets in different ways, perhaps a better picture of Canada’s ecology can be appreciated when their works are considered side by side.
Mackenzie Pereira is a fourth-year B.Sc. student at McGill University, with a major in Physics and a minor in English Literature. She has completed an internship at CERN (2021), held an NSERC undergraduate research award (2022), and is currently an editor for the McGill Science Undergraduate Research Journal.
Works Cited
Bentley, D.M.R. “Therapeutic Nature.” The Confederation Group of Canadian Poets, 1880-1897 (chapter 5), University of Toronto Press, 2004, pp.117-203.
Buell, Lawrence. Introduction. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture, Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995, pp.1-27.
Dickinson, Adam. “Lyric Ethics: Ecocriticism, Material Metaphoricity, and the Poetics of Don McKay and Jan Zwicky.” Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews, vol. 55, 2004, pp.34-52.
Wells, Dorothy. “A Rose Grows in Whylah Falls: Transplanted Traditions in George Elliott Clarke’s ‘Africadia.’” Canadian Literature, vol. 155, 1997, pp. 56-73.
Van Essen, Angela. “Bending, Turning, and Growing: Cree Language, Laws, and Ceremony in Louise B. Halfe/Sky Dancer’s The Crooked Good.” Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 30, no. 1, 2018, pp. 71-93.