Covers The Ground Poem Analysis

Copenhagen’s Nyhavn boasts one of the most picturesque places on Earth; colorful buildings line the canal, offering restaurants, bars, and cafes. But in crafting Nyhavn, we lost the beauty of the natural surroundings, for the buildings obstruct the canal from afar, and their tall facades curtain any form of nature except the sky directly above. Gary Snyder’s 1996 poem “Covers the Ground” focuses on similar environmental issues, juxtaposing man-made structures with nature. In the poem, imagery reveals how man-made structures overpower nature in order to criticize the loss of wilderness to make room for further development.
Descriptions of size highlight how man-made structures cover nature in order to condemn the erosion of the environment due to manufactured objects. The speaker notes that “the ground is covered with / cement culverts / house-high & six feet wide … [as] far as you can see / [and covered with] long straight miles of divider oleanders” (Snyder 5, …show more content…
Specifically, the speaker notices “gleaming fertilizer tank towers [that] fine-line catwalk in the sky” (21). The fact that the speaker sees fertilizer tank towers in the sky instead of clouds or other natural objects demonstrates how man-made structures visually dominate the landscape. The speaker thus places greater visual emphasis on the structures, for natural objects remain hidden by the buildings that cover them. We cannot stand to lose nature and obstruct our view with unnatural objects. As we continue to build larger and higher buildings, we risk losing our natural scenery, leaving us with skyscrapers instead of mountains, roads instead of rivers. We cannot continue to tolerate our loss of nature, as a skyline of buildings replacing clouds and mountains creates a dull and uninspiring landscape, negatively affecting how we