Thursday, April 21, 2016

Earth Day 2016: Comic vs. Lyrical



“Compared to the naturalist, the gardener never fell head over heels for nature.  He's seen her ruin his plans too many times for that.  The gardener has learned, perforce, to live with the ambiguities - that she is all neither all good nor all bad, that she gives as well as takes away.  Nature's apt to pull the rug out from under us at any time, to make a grim joke of our noblest intention.  Perhaps this explains why garden writing tends to be comic, rather than lyrical or elegiac in the way that nature writing usually is...”
- Michael Pollan, Second Nature