State of the Planet is a short poem written by Robert Hass. Upon the first time reading this I noticed that their were a lot of clues that led to a deeper meaning. Words that are not used in daily vocabulary were pulled out of the closet and used in order to show further illustration. It says that the occasion in which this poem was written for the fifth anniversary of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. So I am going out on a limb to assume that Hass was at least initially writing to a scientific audience. Which gave him the time and place (as well as audience) to understand his abstract use of vocabulary. In his poem he frequently refers to Lucretius who happens to be a Roman Poet. Lucretius was not just any regular poet, he wrote on the mysteries of the Universe; much like Hass in State of the Planet. Lucretius happened to believe that the spirit and mind couldn’t survive without the body. He also believed that that there was no God and explained creation through science. And I just can’t help but to think that this poem was a response to Lucretius challenging him on his views. For example, “People have been arguing for centuries, about whether or not you thought of Venus as a metaphor. Because of the rational man they take you for.” I am not quite sure whether Hass agreed with Lucretius ideas or if he was almost mocking them; but either way it was a response. In the ending stanza, Hass talks about the earth needing a restoration. With audience in mind, maybe Hass was talking about our earth and a physical restoration. A restoration of the planet in every sense. I think this restoration included not only cleaning and protecting the earth, but a renewal of the way we think of the earth. To actual step back and reevaluate the way we look at life, and re-find the reasons we have to explain this earth that we actually live on. Maybe this poem was a call to the science world to restore their mind with reevaluation of what they hold to be true? Or than again maybe this is just me, trying to find what I hope he was talking about. =p
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