Shifting Perspectives of the Pastoral in Karen Solie’s “Mole” and Mark Tredinnick’s “Tereticornis”
The pastoral is a genre which demands rethinking in late modernity. The return to a nature defined by simplicity is a possibility which seems fleeting with the passing of days, and to wholly depict nature in art, one must look further than the shepherd and his love. The desire for a shift in the point of view of the pastoral is reflected in two recent poems by prominent environmentalist writers – “Mole” by Karen Solie and “Tereticornis” by Mark Tredennick. The poems, named after an animal and a plant respectively, are imbued with a keen understanding of the pastoral tradition, making their focus on non-human entities more nuanced and thought-provoking. These urban poets do not long for a simple or singular nature but delve into a specific part of their environment and its dynamism. Each poem carves its respective path through the genre, converging in a similar subject matter and use of figurative language but diverging through varied effects of stanza, sound, and voice. Solie’s “Mole” and Tredinnick’s “Tereticornis” align in subverting the pastoral genre through a change of focus from the human to the non-human but differ in their use of form and technique.
by Jackson Pinkowski, 2023 McGill University
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