APRIL 25 MEETING CANCELLED

Due to scheduling conflicts that affect several members, the April 25 meeting to discuss E. O. Wilson's autobiography Naturalist is cancelled and will be rescheduled.

EDWARD O WILSON IS AUTHOR FOR APRIL 2010

For our April meeting, members are reading Naturalist, the autobiography of Edward O Wilson. The brillant author and winner of two Pulitzer prizes, pioneer in sociobiology, distinguished entomologist and teacher, and champion of biodiversity--he is known affectionately to our group as "E O." We worship from afar, but this month we will get a little more up close and personal by reading his fascinating life story.

Check out the links below!

Reviews of Naturalist

E.O. Wilson Biography at the Academy of Achievement (with lots of great photos!)

E O Wilson Biodiversity Foundation

Video: Wilson talks about saving life on earth

REPORT ON MARCH 28 MEETING: MARY OLIVER

Seven of us gather on a misty afternoon to explore our responses to Mary Oliver's work. Some read Owls and Other Fantasies, some The Truro Bear, some Evidence. So many wonderful comments and ideas tumbled over one another, like pebbles in a rushing stream.

We debated whether Oliver's sensibility as a poet, as an artist in love with the sensuality of nature, is as valid a "way of knowing" as the empiricism of Bernd Heinrich. Oliver's approach resonates much more with some of us in our group than others. But no one denies having had at least one of those transcendent experiences in nature that Oliver evokes so well.

We identify that of the writers we have read, those who seem to write most powerfully somehow combine the scientist's passion for facts with the perceptions of their emotional and spiritual selves: the artist and the scientist dancing within one person, the artist-naturalist. We consider male writers we have read who are in touch with their "feminine side" as one member puts it. Oliver is most closely compared to Terry Tempest Williams, Rachel Carson and Robin Wall Kimmerer, all writers who embrace a holistic experience of nature, using their whole selves, the intellect, the body, the soul, and the imagination. It makes sense, considering that we humans are products of nature. Just where does the line between nature and non-nature lie?

The question arose, what are emotions for? Why do we have them? Is it nature or nurture? When we see wild geese winging their way in an undulating V, we respond with a catch in the throat. Is this because we associate it with some pleasant individual childhood memory, or because we--as a species, as mammals-- have co-evolved with nature, with migrating birds who foretell winter or joyous spring, for millennia? Is the study of our response to nature just as important as the study of non-human nature, perhaps these days even more important considering human driven climate change and escalating extinctions?

Mary Oliver invites us to deepen our experience of the natural world and embrace our "place in the family of things."

WILDFLOWER FESTIVAL SEEKS YOUR POEM!

The Potomac Valley Audubon Society will hold its annual spring Wildflower Festival on Saturday, April 17 at the Yankauer Nature Preserve, from 11:00 to 4:00 PM rain or shine. The festival coincides with the peak blooming of spring wildflowers. Guides will lead walks through the preserve for advanced and beginner wildflower identification. Walks suitable for families are included. Children’s activities are planned and refreshments will be provided.

For the third year in a row, the festival includes a special Poetry Walk component—original poems on spring themes penned by local poets will be posted all along the preserve’s Kingfisher trail where the majority of wildflowers are found. Those who wish to submit poems for posting are encouraged to do so! Submissions should be sent by email to pvnaturewriters@gmail.com. Or, send them by regular mail to “PoetryWalk, c/o PVAS, PO Box 578, Shepherdstown, WV 25443. The deadline for submissions is April 10.

POET MARY OLIVER IS AUTHOR FOR MARCH MEETING

PVNWG members will read works by poet Mary Oliver in preparation for our discussion on MARCH 28 (rescheduled date due to February snowstorm.) Members may read any of Oliver's poetry but the collections Owls and Other Fantasies and New and Selected Poems, Volumes I and II are especially recommended.

Mary Oliver is renown for her "passionate attention to the natural world." Perhaps her most well known poem is "Wild Geese" (See links to poetry below.) Her relationship to nature is similar to that of Thoreau and Emerson. As a teenager she lived briefly in the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay, where she helped Millay's family sort through the papers the poet left behind. Millay is seen as an important influence in her work. The style of her work has also been compared to Walt Whitman and Robert Frost. Read more Oliver biography at the Academy of American Poets website here.

Oliver won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for American Primitive in 1984 and the National Book Award in 1992 for New and Selected Poems, among many other honors. Here are some comments that underscore her reputation as one of America's finest nature poets.

Oliver locates wisdom in the wilderness she seeks in solitude, where discoveries about the self and nature's otherness can be made...Expressed in simple language and familiar imagery, evoking dark and joyous states, this vision of nature is often conveyed in an ecstatic voice that compels. Annette Allen, Encylopedia of American Literature. Steven R. Serafin, General Editor. Copyright © 1999 by the Continuum Publishing Company.

Poet Mary Oliver is an "indefatigable guide to the natural world," wrote Maxine Kumin in Women's Review of Books, "particularly to its lesser-known aspects." Oliver's verse focuses on the quiet of occurrences of nature: industrious hummingbirds, egrets, motionless ponds, "lean owls / hunkering with their lamp-eyes." Kumin noted of the poet: "She stands quite comfortably on the margins of things, on the line between earth and sky, the thin membrane that separates human from what we loosely call animal." Poetry Foundation website

A strong sense of place, and of identity in relation to it, is central to her poetry. Her poems are firmly located in the places where she has lived or travelled, particularly her native Ohio and New England; her moments of transcendence arise organically from the realities of swamp, pond, woods and shore. Robin Riley Fast, "The Native American Presence in Mary Oliver’s Poetry," Kentucky Review 12:1/2 (autumn 1993), 59; 65-66.

Her poems are filled with imagery from her daily walks near her home in Provincetown, Massachusetts: shore birds, water snakes, the phases of the moon and humpback whales. Maxine Kumin calls Oliver "a patroller of wetlands in the same way that Thoreau was an inspector of snowstorms..." As her creativity is stirred by nature, Oliver is an avid walker, pursuing inspiration on foot. For Oliver, walking is part of the poetic process. Oliver is also known for her unadorned language and accessible themes. Wikipedia entry

Online poems here and here

Photo of Mary Oliver and Diane Ackerman here.

RESCHEDULED FEBRUARY MEETING

In honor of Heinrich's book Winter World, PVNWG members plan to attend the Winter Wildlife Tracking field trip at Cacapon State Park on February 20. Free and open to the public, it is a family-friendly event led by Park naturalist Kelly Smith. Participants meet at the entrance to the Park Lodge at 10:00 a.m. Pre-registration is recommended but not required. (To pre-register or for more information contact Kelly Heldreth at kheldreth@hotmail.com or 304-229-6229. If the weather is inclement, call 304-676-3397 to make sure the trip is still on.)
After the field trip, PVNWG members will meet at the Cacapon Lodge restaurant to discuss Heinrich's book over lunch. Please RSVP to pvnaturewriters@gmail.com if you plan to attend, so you can be notified in the event of another last minute cancellation. New members are welcome!

FEBRUARY 7 MEETING CANCELLED DUE TO BLIZZARD

Today's PVNWG meeting is cancelled due to the Blizzard of 2010 and the poor road conditions that remain from yesterday's storm.

Notice will be posted here if the February meeting is rescheduled, but thoughts are that we may skip February entirely and discuss Heinrich's book WINTER WORLD along with our February author Mary Oliver at the meeting on March 7.

If you have any questions, please email pvnaturewriters@gmail.com