BIOREGIONAL POETICS/AESTHETICS: SOME TENTATIVE TENETS (by Jim Dodge)
1. THE BIOREGIONAL AESTHETIC IS COMMUNITY-BASED, and yields completely to the central precept that community is not limited to the human, but includes all the flora and fauna, the core "cycles of sustenance" (like the water-cycle, or carbon-cycle), and the larger "figures of regulation" (geological forces like plate tectonics, solar income, air and oceanic currents, and other biospheric forces and phenomena). The overarching principle informing bioregional poetics is sometimes called the "biocentric" or "ecological view," where life in all its forms and relationships is central to all considerations, and is opposed to the “anthropocentric" (human-centered) or egocentric (centered on the human psyche) view. We privately call it "tectonic existentialism" and laugh at ourselves for calling it anything.
2. THE BIOREGION IS THE BODY OF METAPHOR. To communicate, art requires a shared set of references, sources held in common. In constructing associations where you're trying to embody the ineffable (like love, say, or deep regard), the more familiar the vehicle, the finer the understanding. So if you say love is a bird, most people who have seen a bird sense the associations of bird:flight/freedom; nest/home-safety-nurture; song: joy/peace. Even more precise, of course, is to specify the bird (love is a falcon) or bird and activity (love is a falcon turning in a widening gyre). To communicate completely, it is most helpful to actually KNOW the referent, to live it (Love is a ruby-throated hummingbird fumbling the foxglove's flower-heads, the thrum of its wings reverberating in the throats of the pitcher plants along the boggy plains of the Smith River.) Maybe it's flogging the obvious, but the more a reader or viewer shares the creator's references, the higher the quality of communication.
In that sense, all poetry is local. Or poetry is all locale.
3. THE BIOREGION IS THE HOME OF THE VERNACULAR. Bioregional poetics conceives of language as a living, wild system, and of poems as similarly dynamic system of complex associations. Because bioregional poetics is virtually founded on the notion that the power, point, and animating purpose of poetry is high-quality communication, the poetics almost demands a commitment to the vernacular as the primary mode of expression. In the usual sense of "the vernacular," this means a commitment to the "everyday language of the people" as spoken or otherwise used in informal discourse and communication, as opposed to formal or official discourse. It embraces idiom, local locutions, and the common and ordinary style with the same fervor that it eschews the specialized and pretentious. Above all, the poetics values accessibility and inclusion; it wants to communicate with the community. and to offer
its connections and association with clarity and grace, leading to understanding, appreciation, and communion.
4. BIOREGIONAL POETICS SERVES TO MEDIATE HUMAN CULTURE AND ECOSYSTEMS/BIOREGION/BIOSPHERE. It is a tool to explore relationships and associations in life as it is lived. Further, it extends individual identity to include "the sum of sustaining relationships"--everything from family genetics to the food one eats, including the modes of subsistence. Since the exploration is communal, bioregional poets and artists display a strong sense of community and cooperation and tend to minimize the scrimmages of ego that mark so many literary movements. They hold to Jack Spicer's view that we are all working on the same poem, singing the same song, telling the same story, and the primary responsibility of community artists to do their part to the utmost of their abilities, to encourage the best in each other, and to let posterity decide--as it does anyway--who will be remembered. Bioregional poetics heeds Jack Spicer's grandmother's sagacious advice about avoiding petty literary squabbles and pointless clashes of sensibility: ". . .when you get in a fight with a dog turd/You only get shit on your fingers."
5. A BIOREGIONAL POETICS IN NO WAY SUPPOSES A CLOSED, PROVINCIAL AESTHETICS. On the contrary, the natural world teaches the importance of being eminently open to all influences, since diversity offers the greatest flexibility in the dance of adaptation, not to mention the surest footing on the Cliffs of Despair. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, for example, geographically you are part of the Pacific Rim configuration, and thus subject to the influences of Japanese and Chinese philosophy and religion, the Hispanic and Latin American cultures on the southern borderlands, and American culture in general through mass media that are part and parcel of quickly evolving technologies. We have more information than we can know, and what knowledge we think we possess deserves a deeper reflection than time seems to allow. In an age where wisdom may well reside in believing nothing you hear and only half of what you see in the storm of electronic transmissions and babbling bloggers, watching the big maple on a nearby ridge bow to the wind may be information you can build a truth on. The old scout's adage holds particularly dear as we're bombarded with fuzzy claims and distant factoids: "The closer you get to the source, the less likely something has crapped upstream."