David Wagoner's Environmental Advocacy

Abstract

Who, among the poets of the Pacific Northwest, speaks for the environment? The most obvious answer is a rhetorical question: Who doesn't? But one must be careful about terms here. Poets of the Pacific Northwest (from Alaska through Oregon and including Idaho and perhaps Montana as well as the appropriate Canadian provinces) are often, though not always, properly described as "regionalists," and regionalists are perhaps inevitably concerned with the environment, at least in the loosely used sense of the term-their "surroundings." They often reflect in their work a broad range of mythic (or stereotypical?) visions of the West: wide open spaces, Big Sky, the last frontier, rugged individualism, distance, isolation, harsh beauty. The landscape shapes, sometimes warps, character, and that has been a powerful motif in Western literature, including that of the Pacific Northwest.