Writing Poetry

How (Not?) to Write about Nature

Remembered advice from my days as an MFA student

When I was in my twenties, I was studying for a Master’s of Fine Arts degree in Poetry Writing. I experienced a lot of frustrations during that time. This story focuses only on my attempt to put a frustrating meeting behind me and make an earnest effort to take the advice of a famous poet on the faculty who told me to try writing about nature.

I’m not going to say this poet’s name; he was on the board of the Academy of American Poets and lots of other fancy poet stuff. Each quarter, a different poet teaching in the MFA program led the poetry writing workshop. During his workshop, he required us all to make an appointment for a consultation in his office at the end of the quarter.

I’ll never forget the image of him as I entered his office. He was sitting behind his desk and holding a strawberry milkshake in a big paper cup, along with a plastic spoon (they served milkshakes at the food counter in the student union building). He spooned the milkshake into his mouth throughout the meeting. I guess it must have been pretty good. I don’t even like strawberry, so who knows?

We’d been required to turn in a portfolio of work we’d completed over the course of the quarter. He took up my little stack of typed and printed pages and looked at them and looked at me.

He said, “If this is how you want to write, I don’t know what to say to you.”

I remember I’d written a poem about going to the aquarium, and he said it was prosaic and uninteresting. I forget the rest of the poems or anything else he said, except for the one piece of advice he did, finally, come up with for me.

He said I should try and write nature poems. (By the way, he was pretty famous for writing poems about animals and plants and nature.)

When I asked if he could elaborate, he said I should go into nature and write some poems about it. I had already gone to the aquarium and looked at the fish, but I guess it would be different seeing everything in its natural habitat?

Sometime after this conference, I talked to my best friend at the time and told her about this advice. I remember that spring break was starting, and she supported the idea that we go on some nature walks to give the advice a try.

We went to the arboretum where the rhododendrons were coming into bloom; we meandered along a path called Azalea Way. We walked through some wetlands on soft, squishy paths covered in truckloads of wood chips. We had a picnic by a lake and observed big and small ducks as they attempted to bargain with us for bites of our sandwiches and potato chips.

I wrote poems about all of these days out with my friend. Rereading them a year or so later, I realized they were sort of about nature, but more about seeing and experiencing the world through the filter of visiting places with my friend, whom I had come to love (but I hadn’t realized those feelings yet).

I felt a little bad for not being able to write nature poems like the famous poet suggested, but honestly I knew I couldn’t do anything like he suggested. I wasn’t him. I wasn’t going to believe that I could go unfiltered into the natural world and return with some truth that needed to be shared. I could, however, write poems about my afternoons with my friend and how (for example) we made sure the littlest duck didn’t steal a juice box and accidentally pollute the lake.

Being in nature with my friend did make me want to write. I know it’s OK that my writing goes off on its own path that might not interest others who want to venture into the natural world. Well, I was never much of a hiker or outdoorsy type anyway, more of a visitor to the local beach for a walk and maybe, on a chilly day, a hot chocolate on a rusty bench where I’ve sat many times before.

This story was inspired by Sahil Patel’s prompt about nature as a muse. Here’s the link if you want to write something for the prompt, too:

A couple of recent stories I loved are María Ochoa PhD’s inspiring story about how the people in a town worked together to save a local bookshop:

And Kayla Vokolek’s memoir about the end of a long-distance relationship and its transition from dating into friendship: