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Elizabeth Dodd (1989 - )
This poem, "Lyric," begins with a question of faith. Bishop George Berkeley questioned materialism when he asked "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?" Here, Dodd's scattering of "broken" bark and branches across snow create a "grammar" of affirmation. She includes the speaker of the poem—"I turn sideways"—as another natural element, not a dominator of wilderness. The poet's "hillside" consists of unseen realities, including song, the essence of lyrical poetry. Her verse transcends matter, and her answer to Bishop Berkeley is "Yes." Poetry is a sixth sense.
LYRIC
It doesn't matter whether a tree falls or doesn't on this hillside. I am here in this buoyant silence lifting from snow cover. There is no story to tell about cause and effect, no one to pull the stiff sheet of grammar over a scattered pattern of bark and branches broken on the snow. I turn sideways and the wind slips among us, so many vertical, dark shapes.
Education: Elizabeth Dodd received a B.A. in English and French from
Ohio University in 1983; an M.F.A. in poetry from Indiana University in 1986; and a Ph.D. in American and British Literature from Indiana University in 1989. -------------------------------------- © 2008 Denise Low, AAPP 23 © 1992 Elizabeth Dodd "Lyric" (New York University Press).
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Elizabeth Dodd has lived in Kansas since 1989, when she became an English professor at Kansas State University. She publishes poetry and personal essays, and the natural
world appears vividly in all her writings. She also publishes commentary on nature topics that are related to ecological issues, or ecocriticism. This is an emerging field of study in American belles lettres, one that has genesis in the 1930s writings of
Nebraska author Loren Eiseley. The Flint Hills area of Manhattan often inspires her prose and verse, and from these she moves to human concerns.