grasshopper cracking

Grasshopper cracking is metabolic cactus spine drama. Yet chance operation goes completely neglected by pundits of nature. Why? Fusty neo-Victorian beliefs concerning the person? Fear our little house on the prairie has nobody home? I summon the folkloric tumult of Darwin! The many-minded surrealists! To exorcise the contemporary nature writer’s prevalent tone: small town American pastor sermon.

Andrew Schelling, ecopoetics vol 1, page 93

Is there something interesting in this paragraph? I think so. The first sentence is meaningless to me. I googled some of those word combinations, to see if there was some obscure biological phenomenon being referenced, but I couldn’t find it. Is is a composition of chance operations?

I enjoy the rest of the paragraph though. It doesn’t hang together, and the point is not clear. But it has brightness and vigorous language and exclamation points. “Folkloric” and “many-minded” are inspiring adjectives. I’d like an expansion on the neo-Victorian beliefs about the person.

On the other hand, I am not a big fan of making fun of contemporary nature writers, or small town pastors for that matter. It is more in keeping with the ethics of ecopoetry to treat all poetics as viable and necessary components of the system.

Another observation: I’m not convinced that chance operations lend themselves to eco- or nature poetry. Ecologies follow a deep order. Even though there’s always a chance that lightning will strike in a dry forest, the course of events surrounding that lightning strike are strictly procedural. Some of the procedures are visible, but others are deep and complicated by the intersections of many constant changes.

Gotta go, headed for Montana.