My favorite Foster poem was not about calico vs. cashmere, or about getting old, or about regretting a life without love... it was about lumberjacks, and trees. Titled "The Old Lumber-Jack In Exile", the narrator (a man in the timber industry--aka an old lumberjack) laments the loss of the logging tradition in the Adirondacks, which had been replaced by "a spanking brand new auto-road" and "the auto-folk who come here in summer time". This theme of an entire region transitioning from a place of industry to a place for tourists--or a place for outsiders--was not common in her poems, and I thought it was one of the things that made her work specific to the Adirondacks and not rural life as a whole.
The tone of the poem is very nostalgic for a way of life that has passed, and for the narrator's time spent in the lumber camp. The image of the white pine, or what she calls the York State pine, keeps recurring as "the friend I wintered with up in the North" and as a symbol of what the narrator misses so much about his old way of living. This poem's descriptions of the pine are some of the most overt nature references that I saw in any of Foster's poems. It also seems a little bit ironic to me that the poem lamenting the logging industry is the one that glorifies a tree more than any of the others. It is only one kind of tree, however, that seems to be important to the narrator--he has no issues chopping any other species. Perhaps the "York State pine" that is so vital, that he wants to be buried under, is more symbolic of the way things used to be than an actual part of the landscape.
The tone of the poem is very nostalgic for a way of life that has passed, and for the narrator's time spent in the lumber camp. The image of the white pine, or what she calls the York State pine, keeps recurring as "the friend I wintered with up in the North" and as a symbol of what the narrator misses so much about his old way of living. This poem's descriptions of the pine are some of the most overt nature references that I saw in any of Foster's poems. It also seems a little bit ironic to me that the poem lamenting the logging industry is the one that glorifies a tree more than any of the others. It is only one kind of tree, however, that seems to be important to the narrator--he has no issues chopping any other species. Perhaps the "York State pine" that is so vital, that he wants to be buried under, is more symbolic of the way things used to be than an actual part of the landscape.
Great points, Annie. There is some interesting biology here too. He laments the loss of logging, and of old growth white pine. He (she) notes in the poem "Conservation" that there are impressive white pines coming back, but that they are not as big as the first-growth trees. This is interesting, but also a bit weird. White pine is a pioneer tree, so only grows when other trees have been cleared out (through logging or farming, usually). So first-growth (old-growth?) pine in the ADKS would have been very rare. And loggers were mostly interested in red spruce (which was abundant in the region).
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of Aldo Leopold in reading the poems, and your post. He too thought of the white pine as his favorite tree. He also says that it's a good sign to have a favorite tree--it means you have to know quite a bit about trees in order to have a choice in the first place.