Routes to Admittance: a Close Reading of 'Opening Woods' by Peter Larkin

Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry

Eleanor Grace Schenk¹ 

[1] University of York;

关键词: Peter Larkin;    trees;    shelter;    ecopoetics;    scarcity;   

DOI  :  10.16995/bip.3406

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In the following article, I explore the imagery of openness and admittance in Peter Larkin’s poem, 'Opening Woods'. I discuss the opposition portrayed between the openness of woodlands and natural processes, against human interference and industry. I come to argue that Larkin’s poem encourages us to strive to have a reciprocal relationship with woodlands and to see their inherent value. A main focus is how the concept of ‘Open’ itself has two sides in the poem: that of allowing and admittance, which is connected with trees, and that of openness being a puncture or wounding, which is attached to humans. Larkin draws us to look differently at trees and ourselves. For example, the shelter trees provide all year round and their own ‘productivity’. They are open but not hollow. It is humans who puncture them, leaving wounds. In the concluding paragraphs, I explore how woodlands are perhaps being pushed too much and that they may one day refuse admittance, or be gone completely. It is us, as humans, who need to step out and back from the woodlands, giving them space and allowing us to see them properly. I argue that Larkin is wanting us to understand that only then, once this space has been sheltered, should we enter again.

【 授权许可】

Unknown