Document Type
Lesson Plan
Publication Date
Spring 2024
Abstract
Death, Love, and Feathers: Poems Teaching Us to Fly is an anthology that provides readers who are just starting to become interested in ecopoetry and want a place to begin their wonderful journey. We have incorporated some well-known ecopoets such as Mary Oliver, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Maya Angelou, which have personally inspired our own interest and sparked our love for ecopoetry. We have also included a few other lesser-known contemporary eco-poets, whose work touches on how our environment has been transformed through climate change.
We also present poems by Wanda Coleman, Eleanor Wilner, and Joy Harjo.
Through this anthology of eight poems, we highlight 3 prominent themes (love, birds, death) that often serve as a common thread between both ecopoems and poetry writ-large. The commonality of these themes demonstrate how eco-poems can be tied to a multitude of different aspects, not simply about painting a picture of the natural world. These poems highlight additional themes of femininity, different human interactions with the earth, desire, mortality, and violence. Enjoy!
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Isa Specchierla , '26; Sophia Cáceres , '26; and Peter Schmidt.
(2024).
"Death, Love, And Feathers: Poems Teaching Us To Fly".
https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-english-lit/414
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Comments
Developed by Swarthmore College students, Isa Specchierla and Sophia Cáceres, with feedback from Professor Peter Schmidt, as a final assignment in English 71E/Environmental Studies 041, "Ecopoetry and the Climate Crisis," spring 2024.