Welcome to the Anthropocene

by Alice Major

It isn't easy to throw things in the sea for the sea will bring them back again -- from "In memoriam" Alice Major continues her long engagement with science and math as means for finding significance in human life and in the universe. In these poems, she observes the comedy and the tragedy of this human-dominated moment on Earth. Major's most persistent question--"Where do we fit in the universe?"--is made more urgent by the ecological calamity of human-driven climate change, and challenges us to find some humility in our overblown sense of our cosmic significance. These poems question human hierarchies, loyalties and consciousness, and invite readers to join the conversation.

Genres: Poetry, Science, Canada

136 pages, Paperback

Published January 31, 2018

About the author

Alice Major is a Canadian poet, who served as poet laureate of Edmonton, Alberta. During her tenure as poet laureate, she founded the Edmonton Poetry Festival in 2006. She continues to serve on the Board of Directors for the Edmonton Poetry Festival Society as President.

Major emigrated from Scotland with her sister at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto, Ontario before working as a weekly newspaper reporter in central British Columbia. She has lived in Edmonton, Alberta since 1981. She has a BA (English, history) from Trinity College, University of Toronto, and works as a freelance writer specializing in utility issues.

She is past president of the Writers Guild of Alberta, and the League of Canadian Poets. She has published six collections of poetry. Her poetry has always been influenced by her interest in science and she has published a collection of essays, Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science.

Reviews

[Ted]

Pre-review...

Will be getting to sometime, this book of poetry by Alice Major, Edmonton's first poet laureate. her books of poetry & essays are informed by her long-standing interest in the sciences and her concern for the natural world.

A few lines from the long title poem.

But fear is growing in us (like a gas
after too rich a meal) that we have passed
some threshold - that we may be rendering
earth derelict, a disaster ending
not just giant pandas but ourselves.
A fear we're blocking earth's escape valves
and bio-sinks. Many will dismiss the question -
they say its just a touch of indigestion,
we'll be fine. Besides, they say, it isn't us -
one good fart of forest-fire exhaust
dwarfs all the output of our vehicles.
Still, doubt's sour odor lingers in our nostrils
like effluvia wafting from our garbage dunes.
Our conurbations spread their plumes
of carbon far beyond the city limits,
and our roaring engineering mimics
volcanic-level belches every day.
Sober citizens consider ways
to plan for rising tides and surging storms
as polar ice caps melt and our world warms.
We design deployable walls, but feel
as if we were the child in some old tale
of dikes and immanent disaster,
sensing that the cracks are spreading faster
than adults (waking finally) can mend
with chips of silicon and bags of sand.

...

Many folks dismiss
this history, insisting We can fix
anything, we're smarter than bacteria.
There isn't any reason for hysteria.
We'll plant some trees. But do we really want
to take the risk? We don't seem intelligent
enough to work together, work through
our rifts and schisms. More likely we will do
little more than flap our techno-wings.

Will it be our place in the scheme of things
- with all the virtual flim-flam we've installed -
to burst the blown-glass bubble of our world?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Shakespearean Tragedy
Next review: The Heart of the Matter
Older review: Marat Sade

Previous library review: Wild from lost to found on the Pacific Crest trail
Next library review: Death in Venice

[Mr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alice Major’s poetry collection is undoubtedly original, but the work as a whole lacks cogency. The first poem after the prologue is lengthy, including allusions to Alexander Pope’s concept of the “Great Chain of Being.” Pope’s ideas are frequently considered in many poems. The reader thus expects to reflect on more heady subjects; instead, alliterative wankfests with little substance are strewn throughout the collection – “…my neuronal nets have fused / soft-pouched flower with a face, I’m stuck / with that cartoon, cannot undue its click” (from “Pareidolia”). Her writing style includes tongue-tying phrases and obvious attempts at poetic grandeur. Many segments of the title poem, “Welcome to the Anthropocene,” are quite cringe-worthy: “Expedience / take precedence above exactitude / and all our pictures of the world are crude.” Eek. “Surely we / matter more than matter.” Oof. “Our attention sputtering like fading flashlights.” Weak. “Meanwhile leaders wave / light sabres wildly, as they try to carve / our common interests into fragments.” No thanks. “Warp, weft, weld.” Wolf!

After setting the stage for what seems to be a whimsical celebration of undisturbed nature and a diatribe against humanity’s pride, Major launches into obscure anecdotes and puzzling quips about the inanity of grocery stores, house pets, office workers, and her regret over not seeing the “complex face” of her ex-lover who now identifies as transgender (from “Complex number plane”). It is exceedingly difficult to analyze the theme of Major’s collection. Perhaps there is no theme. The problem is that Major really wants us to know about our insignificance in this cosmic dance. We humans are “hubris personified” (from “Welcome to the Anthropocene”). We are simply here, just like the glorious murmurations of starlings and the overlooked, invisible protozoa. No species is exceptional. And yet, Major is mostly concerned with corn, walnuts, grass, coffee, and numbers. In a world so exceptional, in a world that gleams like a “blue pearl on the necklace of the planets” (from “Welcome to the Anthropocene”), the enigmatic and the portentous should be lauded – not reduced to shopping carts and meaningless abstractions.

If only Major would have concretized more of her writing, this collection would sing. Poems like, “The Texas sharpshooter fallacy,” “Waltz, wasp,” and “Confabulation” carry great wisdom. The strengths of Major’s voice cannot be neglected. Her humor is refreshing in such strange and chaotic times: “Sorry to be useless, but that / is what we are” (from “In media res”). “We could love a pug whose nose / was long enough to breath with, raise fowls / for values other than to be our victuals” (from “Welcome to the Anthropocene”). “Oxygen tanks. / Small backpacks on wheels. / Reluctant children. / Dogs trying to take a poo. / All of history” (from “The things we drag behind us”). To be sure, Major does not fail to entertainingly combine levity with such a serious subject as the Anthropocene.

As much as the title poem fails, it succeeds with the characterization of our kind as a “feckless species, more invested / in the partial, while the total goes unnoticed” and a recognition that, although our pride “teeters at the very edge / of tragedy, we will not look up from the page / that we are scribbling too busily / to think of ends.” Major’s focus on time is evocative. All our regrets and bad memories – our “dead sticks and stalks” – will be covered. “Time will bury them in green” (from “Circadian Arcadias). Humans’ cognitive illusions are briefly explored as well before Major concludes her collection with a musing on the elegance of change (from “Cledonism”).

Poetry that weaves together abstruse science with beautiful reveries on nature, time and space, and human mortality is always welcome. But that welcome is deservedly for those who hit the mark. Major missed, but her words did not land completely out of sight – “Of course the shot lands somewhere – the barn’s too big to miss entirely” (from The Texas sharpshooter fallacy”). The main issue with this collection is that, for a poet to tackle the social, cultural, and natural landscape of an epoch where human-induced climate change threatens to undermine our planet’s very stability, words and tropes cannot be so underwhelming.

[Zuska · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning poetry collection, makes me want to read everything else she's ever written.
The first section is the title poem, a long discourse in 10 sections written in response to Alexander
Pope's "An Essay on Man". Major's examination of climate change and genetic engineering is something quite unique and made me think about these issues in new ways. And perhaps, with somewhat less despair than I usually do. The poems in the remaining sections are no less stellar. The section "Discounted Annuals" includes some of my favorites: Draft of a Poem on Inclusion, The hat, Old Anna. The League of Poets Burial Society would be a balm and an eyeopener to anyone who's ever been on the receiving end of learned critique. Major has the gift of considering topics that seem so thoroughly over-handled they've gone threadbare, finding a fresh perspective, and extracting new insights (to mix all my metaphors.) Highly recommend this collection.

[Charlee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't vibe with most of these, but I liked a few. Notably: "Guardians of Eden", "Red sky at...", "Catena 2.71 etc", "Draft of a poem on 'inclusion'","Foil", "Hallucinating the muse", and "pronomial".

[Sam Laverton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first poem of the book, In medias res, was by far my favourite of the collection. I liked some others as a whole, and though I felt rather apathetic to others, there was something enjoyable in every single one, be it a sharp few lines or a striking combination of words.

[Emma Woodhouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful, painful in places, the work of a fantastic poet and manipulator of language. Fabulous poetry that made me stop, and think, and wonder, and grieve and love the world we live even more fervently.

[Ryanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Bird mathematicians / struggle to calculate / those invisible walls / where the universe stops"

[Georgia · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the strange and uncertain times we are all currently living with I know I’ve started thinking more about humanity’s impact on the world and the direction we are moving with. This poetry collection explores this in a really interesting and complex way. I would absolutely recommend.