Rachel Carson
Unwilling to be crushed by money, power and greed,
She did the science for earth’s and our need;
Her research came together in her “Silent Spring”,
Bird Songs? Good Health? Rachel Carson did bring!
© F.W. HeatonJune, 2017
In her landmark treatise, Silent Spring, published by Houghton Mifflin fifty-five years ago today, 27 September 1962, Rachel Carson proved she was both poet and prophet! Painstakingly researched, courageously crafted and powerfully delivered, her work has been described as being as close as prose can be to poetry without the rhyme or meter. Universally opposed by chemical companies and well-connected/well-funded lobbies, Carson’s work documented the disastrous effects on the environment from indiscriminate use of synthetic pesticides, eventually leading to a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses, a rising awareness by the American public of environmental issues, and the eventual creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In our current 2017 political situation of powerful lobbies discrediting science, it is worth noting that Carson’s book was rated by Discovery Magazine in 2006 as one of the twenty-five greatest science books of all time.
This past May, Writer’s Almanac, sponsored by The Poetry Foundation, advised that 27 May would have been Rachel Carson’s 110th birthday. Having described her first book, Under the Sea-Wind (1941), they went on to explain: “She won the National Book Award in nonfiction for her second book, the best-seller The Sea Around Us (1951). In her acceptance speech, she said: ‘The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science. . . . The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities. If they are not there, science cannot create them. If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.’ “
Mary & I have been intending to complete research we began fourteen years ago and our writing of a book dealing with the educational/environmental influence of three what we call “Sources of Wisdom” (all three now deceased): Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac, 1949), Thunderbird Bear Woman She Who Speaks With The Wind (Anglicized name, Jean Augustine) of the Mi’kmaq Tribe, Nova Scotia, Canada, and Rachel Carson. Carson’s publication date today and Writer’s Almanac’s birthday reminder encourages us to take up that research/writing with intent to finish. In the meantime, we encourage your read of one or all: Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us, and Silent Spring. It is a different kind of spectacular poetry!
June 1963, Carson testifying at Senator Abraham Ribicoff’s U.S. Senate hearing on pesticide-related issues. She also testified at the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce on the same topic. Criticism? In your online searches, you can read a selection of the well-orchestrated criticism directed at her from all fronts. Perseverance? She persevered! Achievement? Carson is among the few recognized as beginning the modern worldwide environmental movement. Courage? At the time of her U.S. Senate appearances, Carson was losing her battle with breast cancer. She died of the disease ten months later, 14 April 1964.