Poet sets a new path for humanity
“In time, maybe the land will decide.”
Scott T. Starbuck is an award-winning poet, career fisherman, climate activist and longtime resident of the Pacific Northwest. His most recent book, “Bridge at the End of the World (New and Selected Poems)” is a culmination of his major published poetic output.
He is described by Jerry Martien on the back cover of the book: “As a poet of climate change and a vital witness to what is at stake, he is a voice we should be paying attention to. Fisherman and teacher, public citizen and lover of the living earth, he wakens us to the beauty and peril of our moment.” After reading this collection, I agree whole-heartedly with this cover statement and would add that “Bridge at the End of the World” is probably one of the strongest political and environmental activist poetry collections I have read. His style is not that of “rant and roll” but it is very poetic. He allows his message to be clearly present and understood with flair and feeling.
The editor’s quote “Poets can serve as the conscience of our society” also grounds the perspective of this collection. In this sense, and somewhat in the spirit of Native American culture, Starbuck is a contemporary wisdom-keeper, sharing his knowledge and insightful experience, here, with us all.
In this book with five sections referencing his previous collections and an additional section of “New Poems,” we have poems titled “Bumper Sticker: Extinction is Forever,” “At Nevada Nuclear Test Site,” “View of Modern War from Space Station,” “Coyote’s Prediction,” “Salish Sea Prophecy,” “Thoughts at the End of Empire,” “Ghost of Bukowski Speaks of Climate Change,” “Recycle,” ‘Welcome to the Future,” “On Earth With Big Oil.” While many of the poems in this collection hint at rather dark subject matter, in the end Starbuck’s poems — while being honestly straightforward — are at the same time positive and hopeful. Such is his ouvre, his heart. “The real work/is daily practice/in order to be/of greater service/... while truth/like a cedar raven/waits and speaks/at in-between/silence,” he writes in the poem dedicated to the Beat eco-poet Gary Snyder.
And then in a poem devoted to the extinction of otters, he ends his poem with the words: “Children drew otters/in schools/and noticed/in river shadows/asking why we lost them/and what was more important/than having them here.” In “Salish Sea Prophecy” Starbuck writes: “Ancestors had it all — snowy Thunderbird Mountains,/vast mysterious sea, uncountable salmon/returning each spring and fall.” Or in the poem “Coyote’s Prediction” Starbuck ends the poem with the lines “Only things/that belong here/will last.”
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But then there are lighter, more personal moments like in the poem “Earth Like the Deck of a Ship” where he writes “Maybe there is a spaceship you navigate/with an electric guitar./In the 60s we made songs like that.” As a baby-boomer from the 60s myself, I resonate and relate to that!
Being that 2024 was an election year, I would be remiss to not include a quote from Starbuck’s poem “Election Year” where he states: “... the way humans/hear of melting/Arctic,/blink, and do/nothing.” In the poem “Thoughts at the End of Empire” he shows us his more inquisitive side when pondering “It’s possible future generations will redefine/family, community, work, value, happiness,/life, dirt, success./ It’s also possible, based on our collective/behavior, there won’t be future generations.” But he continues in a positive vein, ever hopeful and optimistic in a later poem: “Exxon Mobil Became BlueOrbSolar ... Each country committed to saving/one thing from extinction—them.” And it always seems to come back to nature and the natural world with Starbuck, as in the poem “After Dreaming Extinction of Birds” where he writes: “... winged creatures/of every color and shade/filled skies with song./...Their migrations signaled/change of seasons/when there were seasons.”
On this path, Starbuck continues, back and forth, from fact to friction with his wake up call for us all to become more observant, diligent, and active when it comes to the future of planet and humanity. As a teacher, he suggests that we practice “deep listening/and long walks by still/or moving water/with wisdom/of stomach, feet, nose,/tongue, ears and intuition.” And so it is appropriate that he should feature the following words in the poem “Disabled Dancer” toward the end of the book: “ …. changing shallow/perceptions/that must be changed/to save what remains/that must be saved” and similarly in his poem “Above the Fish Hatchery” with “dreams connecting us to everything here/and beyond.” Other memorable lines in his book are “we would show up/to do the work/that must be done;” “to swim free in moonlit surface,/listen to/or sing ancient whale songs;” “The refuge this time/is going inward,/making peace with yourself/and those you love.” And, finally, in the book’s last poem he puts everything in the collection together in a final “doxology:” “the old ones say,/love is the only thing/to escape black holes.” So, like Starbuck, I’ll leave you with that. With love. Which in the end is all there really is that matters.
(Thomas Rain Crowe is a regular contributor to The Smoky Mountain News and is author of the multi-award winning nonfiction nature memoir “Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods (2005).” He lives in Jackson County.)
