메리 올리버 자연시의 생태주의적 비전

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate on how Mary Oliver's ecological visions have developed and changed over time by analysing her poems, mostly from New and Selected Poems (1992). In this process, I find her poems to pursue the possibility of (re)connection between man and nature through her perceptual changes towards their relationship; from complete disconnection to the possible linkage after confirming the truth that these two, men and nature, originally have similar family-like relationship, and Oliver's effort to become one with nature. In other words, this paper traces and reveals the epistemic drive of poetic imagination which supports the coalescence of man and nature by forming the perception of homogeneity and connectivity between the two and by trying to become one.

In chapter 2, through poems such as “One or Two Things", “The Turtle", “The Black Snake", and “Carrying the Snake to the Garden”, we will look out the homogeneity between man and nature, where the two were hitherto thought to be opposites. Furthermore, by delving into “Wild Geese” and “The family” that depict the unity of humans and organisms, I will prove the interdependence of man and nature. And in Chapter 3, we will pay attention to Oliver's poems; “August", “At Blackwater Pond", “Happiness” that seek the possibility of man and nature unionising, as well as the singularity of life and death in the natural world which is sought in “The First". On the other hand, in the poem “October", chapter 7 depicts a world where man and nature are unified by the means of imagination. In the end, this study verifies Oliver's unceasing effort to perceive and overcome the ecological crisis during her lifetime by producing prolific poems which prove her outlook on nature, the ecological visions, which will eventually harmonize the relationship between men and nature by a mutual trust that does not distinguish men from nature.