from "A theory and practice for poetry

by Pam Ore

Language is an ecological adaptation, an evolved
behavior that helps humans negotiate the environment,
to gain resource and reproductive advantages.

Writing is a particular specialization of the language adaptation.
It permits detailed knowledge and a history of the patterns
of such knowledge to be transferred
and built upon across generations.

Writing accelerates and entrenches habits of resource use
and reproduction. Commerce, law, science, religion
could not stand as they are without documents.
Writing is the mortar of human institutions.

What exactly, are the responsibilities of poets in an age
of mass extinctions? How does poetry
reinforce, constrain, accelerate or re-imagine
hard-wired consumptive relationships with the environment?

How can poetry function as adaptive
when human success threatens so many species?
What new purposes and behaviors, if any, are possible if

each written word is a physical interaction with the
Earth?