#jacksondougherty

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

Urbs in horto

The Lake front belongs to

                                          the people;

one great unobstructed view, 

stretching away to the horizon,

where water and clouds seem to meet.

The Lake is living

                             water;

ever in motion,

and ever changing in color

and in the form of its waves.

In every aspect

                         it is a living thing;

Not a foot of its shores should be

appropriated by individuals.

Probably 1,000,000 cubic yards of waste

are annually conveyed to the Lake front

this constantly growing amount of waste

material can be put in cheaply. 

Imagine this supremely beautiful parkway,

with its frequent stretches of fields,

playgrounds, avenues, and groves,

What will it do for us in health and happiness?

Will the people of means be so ready to run away?

The sport of yachting is very greatly

in need of encouragement.

Natural scenery furnishes 

the contrasting element 

to the artificiality of the city.

All of us should often run away

from the work of men’s hands

and back into the wilds,

I took parts of the Burnham Plan of Chicago, which was an early example urban planning, and which had a significant influence on the construction of the city. In particular, it focused on six categories, one of which was preservation of the lake. 

 I was surprised to see that one of the proposed “improvements” to the lakefront was the creation of miles of parkland in the form of landfill along the lake-shore that would create a barrier island of publicly owned park out of solid waste. 

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

On the grasses

The ducks stood; bills underwater.

One looked up, then resumed its business.

Cooper’s hawk flew low over the grass.

The hawk does not belong to Cooper.

The daffodils fill the grass;

The ducks stand by daffodils —

The hawk flies over the daffodils.

The dandelions sprout in clumps.

The trees sound of singing —

Small birds drive over the grass ­—

Large cars flit about the highway.

Their sounds compete in volume.

The birdsong provides the melody;

The pounding of the tires gives the rhythm.

The birds are finite.

The cars go forever.

Nothing interrupts either sound.

Metal stakes sprout up along the sea wall.

Their height mimics that of the grasses.

Their sparsity distinguishes the two.

The grasses grow dense along the sea wall.

Lumpen masses rest occasionally.

Tree trunks uprooted and stationary.

Wood fencing piled and stationary.

Construction equipment parked and stationary.

Some things cannot rest —

Wind-blown plastic shuffles across the grasses.

Wind-blown leaves shuffle against their branches.

Wind-blown water shuffle into the sea wall.

Wind-blown gulls shuffle through the air.

The trees are sparse, but eternal;

The sea wall cracks and crumbles.

Shards lie haphazard along the grasses.

Nothing can change the trees but time.

Some trees hold brown leaves even still.

Birds seek refuge in the trees —

The trees seek sunlight for their leaves—

Sunlight must seek something in its travels.

The birds respond to the wind.

Gulls change course.

The hawk loops upward.

Little birds change altitude.

The cars do not feel the wind.

Their course does not change.

They do not loop upward.

Their altitude does not change.

Their business is not interrupted.

[jacksonstudent-blog]

On the grasses

The ducks stood; bills underwater.

One looked up, then resumed its business.

Cooper’s hawk flew low over the grass.

The hawk does not belong to Cooper.

The daffodils fill the grass;

The ducks stand by daffodils —

The hawk flies over the daffodils.

The dandelions sprout in clumps.

 The trees sound of singing —

Small birds drive over the grass ­—

Large cars flit about the highway.

Their sounds compete in volume.

 The birdsong provides the melody;

The pounding of the tires gives the rhythm.

The birds are finite.

The cars go forever.

Nothing interrupts either sound.

 Metal stakes sprout up along the sea wall.

Their height mimics that of the grasses.

Their sparsity distinguishes the two.

The grasses grow dense along the sea wall.

 Lumpen masses rest occasionally.

Tree trunks uprooted and stationary.

Wood fencing piled and stationary.

Construction equipment parked and stationary.

 Some things cannot rest —

Wind-blown plastic shuffles across the grasses.

Wind-blown leaves shuffle against their branches.

Wind-blown water shuffle into the sea wall.

Wind-blown gulls shuffle through the air.

 The trees are sparse, but eternal;

The sea wall cracks and crumbles.

Shards lie haphazard along the grasses.

 Nothing can change the trees but time.

Some trees hold brown leaves even still.

 Birds seek refuge in the trees —

The trees seek sunlight for their leaves—

Sunlight must seek something in its travels.

 The birds respond to the wind.

Gulls change course.

The hawk loops upward.

Little birds change altitude.

 The cars do not feel the wind.

Their course does not change.

They do not loop upward.

Their altitude does not change.

Their business is not interrupted.

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

What do you think it is?

What do you think it is?

It’s Ovaltine™

Seriously, what do you think it is?

Ovaltine™ [chuckles]

 What’s in dust?

I don’t know. It’s just dust.

I don’t know what dust is, but what’s in the dust?

I don’t know.

See how it forms a circle. I bet the rain falls in a little puddle, and then it evaporates leaving behind the dust.

Ok.

So, I guess, what’s in the rain?

I’m not sure.

 “Yellow Dust”

Yellow dust originates in the deserts of China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan

It blows east into China, Korea, and Japan.

The dust has become a problem as more and more industrial pollutants,

Like heavy metals, sulfur, and other carcinogens,

Are found in the dust as it settles over the city and people breath it in.

 “Yellow Puddles”

Its tree pollen.

If you touch one of the dried up spots you will notice it is a powder.

Chemical residue in rain will crystallize and not sweep up so easily.

You need to vist a place like Hamilton Ontario to experience that kind of rain.

Actually, it's elemental sulphur.

Sulphur has to be removed from bitumen in the oil "making" process, and

There's so much of it, it literally blows around in the air.

When it rains, it floats on the top of the puddle (Sulphur Floats).

It is TREE POLLEN.

We get it every year here at this time and you will notice it more when it rains.

Trees with yellow pollen - evergreens - spruce, cedar, fir, larch and hemlock.

It will be gone in a week or two.

I was working outside in the courtyard when I thought about the spots that I seemed to populate all of the plastic chairs in the courtyard. I had noticed them before, but usually only as something to wipe away. 

In doing research, I wasn’t really sure how to specify the evidence that I had found, so I made the simplest descriptions and went from there. 

I was inspired by conspiracy theories, as well as my own impressions of what the material could be in directing my search for answers. Even so, I was surprised to see the mix of man-made, natural, and hybrid (where should elemental sulfur fit into this dichotomy) explanations. 

The writing itself was shaped by my encounters with others more than any purposeful linguistic choices. I think that applying more consideration to the questions could have improved the piece. I would also like to play with format more, for example by transcribing more than just sounds, and forming a short play from the questions. 

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

Week 6 Reading Response

In reading White Noise, I noticed the recurrence of ideas of technology and its relationship with death. This connection was clear independent of any connection with nature and the natural, for example, in the form of the handgun and its ability to bring Mink closer to death.

But Don DeLillo also implicates nature as technology links this ‘natural’ technology to death all the same. For example, the primary pollutant of the airborne toxic event is itself ‘organic’ in the chemical sense, “packed with chlorides, benzines, phenols, hydrocarbons, or whatever the precise toxic content” (124). Thus, just as in Silent Spring, and likely inspired by Silent Spring, manipulating the molecules of life provides the means of the industrial scale poisoning that assures Jack of his death. Indeed, DeLillo purposely imagines the cloud of Nyodene D. not as “a death made in the laboratory, defined and measurable,” but rather as “some seasonal perversity of the earth like a flood or tornado” (124). Thus, the man-made byproducts of the technology of insecticide becomes a natural disaster in the strict sense.

Going further, the solution deployed to head off this disaster represents the adaptation of life to avoid death, in the form of microorganisms that will eat the toxic cloud. Even this solution represents a turning over of responsibility from humans to nature, since, in the end, “no one knew what would happen to the toxic waste once it was eaten or to the microorganisms once they were finished eating” (153). This lack of knowledge of the consequences of mankind’s actions mirrors the idea which appears throughout the novel that information is transitive and inconsequential.  

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

Week 5 Reading Response

“Lake Superior” surprised me with its simple blank verse, which hid so much of Niedecker’s journey around the great lakes, through the history of the region, geologically and in terms of the history of white explorers and their interactions with Native Americans.

Reading the notes revealed so much meaning that previously was inaccessible within an enigmatic poem. I enjoyed my first reading, but I lacked the context to know what the Soo was, that Marquette was more than the name of a university, and that Joliet was more than a suburb. Reading the notes illuminated the allusions contained within the text, while suggesting the author’s fascination with minerals and stones. But even the notes were allusive at times, as the essay by Crase makes clear. They take on some of the poetic qualities of the finished work, and hardly imply the full set of influences from which Niedecker draws as source material for her “Lake Superior.” 

I’m grateful to the editor for including the Crase essay, but it is interesting to think back to before I had the context that it provided, and how that context has changed the way I think about the poem itself. 

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

Saw Bucktown

Headed north.

Past the club lucky and the bucktown market.

Passed no goats — saw a cow tho.

The cow saw the stars, but not the park. 

The park holds a crowd and baseball and dogs —

the crowd and baseball and dogs ignored the cow.

The cow looked towards a church —

no one within the cathedral. 

The cow did not blink in its looking.

Only standing and staring for the cow. 

Nearby — a different crowd idles.

A bike hangs from the rubber structure.

The bike’s owner waits nearby. 

The cow is visible, but does not turn to look. 

Runners pass on the left, headed east. 

dogs from the park occasionally. 

Cars underneath travel north. 

The rubber never moves — even as tires 

roll all around it, in every direction.

The rubber forms a wheel, or a dragon.

The bike rides the unflinching dragon.

Its owner waits nearby, watching. 

Headed south.

Past the shuffleboard club and the small cheval.

I went up to Bucktown over the weekend. The town was originally named after the prevalent goat farms in the late 19th century. Many of its residents were Polish immigrants, and Bucktown formed a part of the ‘Polish downtown’ in Chicago. This trend of Polish settlement persisted through the 1960s and explains the presence of Saint Mary of the Angels church, a Polish Cathedral style building that is open during the day, every day. More recently, Bucktown has gentrified, as represented by businesses like the Small Cheval and the Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club. A variety of art installations within the neighborhood, but the two that I focused on the most were within sight of each other. “Cowlileo” was commissioned in 2001 by the Renaissance Companies, a real estate company, and sculpted by Buffalo, NY artist Ken Aiken, who was renting from the Renaissance Companies at the time that he designed a different series of “Holy Cow” sculptures. The other sculpture is Chakaia Booker’s “Brick House,” a 34-foot spiral of recycled rubber that borders the Bloomingdale trail, a.k.a. the 606, an elevated trail that runs along what used to be a railroad track. The sculpture was installed 

For this poem, I wanted to play with the repetition that I saw in this week’s poems, where, for example, Lisa Robertson would revisit a line from earlier in the poem with only slight modification. I also thought about travel and motion and how these ideas contrast with the stationary nature of permanent art.  

[ecopoeticsatchicago]

Constructing a Spread

A worker pours sugar, palm oil, hazelnuts, skim milk, cocoa, soy lecithin (as emulsifier), and vanillin (an artificial flavor) into a vat. The hazelnuts have been finely chopped into a paste elsewhere within the facility. The worker activates the mixer that allows all of the ingredients to mix evenly into a paste the consistency of which is assured by the soy lecithin. The paste is then moved, via automated nozzles, from the vat into a jar. The jar is decorated by a robotic arm with a wrapper identifying the contents as loved by bagels.

A worker sweeps through the row of trees, riding on a tractor which has affixed to its front an elevated conveyor belt, throwing the nuts and their attached branches into the a pile that stretches the length of the row. Another worker driving a different tractor comes to collect the linear pile, separating nuts from twigs, and forcing these into a bucket which holds thee nuts until they are moved into a drying facility where the moisture is pulled from the nuts.

I chose Nutella as a food stuff for its conspicuousness. I usually eat within the dining halls where the food cannot contain any tree nuts or peanuts due the prevalence and strength of many nut allergies. As such, the only Nutella that I eat comes by my own hand in snacks. This weekend, I got some Nutella because I was making study break for my house. The decision to get Nutella was made late at night Saturday when my friend and I decided to make grilled sandwiches and were choosing the toppings of these sandwiches. Thus, the decision to get Nutella was premeditated, but mostly incidental to the food I was eating.