Camille Dungy’s Poetry as a New Perspective on the LA Wildfires
Camille Dungy’s “this beginning may have always meant this end” provides a personal confession of fear and possibility in the face of environmental disaster—a piece that may provide comfort and empathy for those troubled by the California fires.
Camille Dungy’s poem, “this beginning may have always meant this end,” starts with an antithetical expectation within her title. A new start may have always implied a conclusion. Her title describes a cyclical process, foreshadowing the end to a beginning.
But she must start at the beginning—her beginning. Set in a first person point of view, she describes her perception of the environment, stating, “coming from a place where we meandered mornings…i knew coyote, like everyone else.” The use of “we” and “everyone else” suggests a sense of community knowledge in appreciating their environment. Her diction creates familiar scenery to the Californian eye; she recollects specific plants and flowers, digging through the depths of her nostalgia to showcase her expertise. Dungy prides herself for her art of gardening, expanding more on it through her book, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden. She knows nature, asserting that it is “everything i loved.”
The reader can hear her voice softening as she proceeds through memory. Although she starts with cacophonous words (quail, coyote, lichen on the rocks), her words melt and soften through her euphony and alliteration (soft smell of sage, a place where grass might grow greener). The personified grass takes on a life of its own by whispering. Yet this peace signifies a calm before the storm. Her enjambed free verse (lacking full stops and relying on commas) runs on to describe the blazing chaos that swallows the scene. Animals exit the area, running from destructive forces like hot wind and trash. Life flees.
Her poem ends with an interesting tension between certainty and uncertainty. Phrases like “we knew” and “all of it” convey her utter certainty of what faces destruction. The simple adjustment of “everything” to “every thing” specifies that it is literally every single piece and part of her natural world. Yet she possesses a slight uncertainty, or perhaps disbelief, that this is occurring. Phrases like “could flame,” “could flare,” and “may have” suggest that these events do not necessarily have to happen, or should not even happen. Although the perfect beginning may suggest the imperfect ending, there exists the chance that these flames are preventable.
Discussions regarding preventative action have come up in response to the recent Los Angeles wildfires. Sammy Roth, a climate columnist for the Los Angeles Times, defines this “weather whiplash” as a result of “a global economy built on fossil fuels.” It appears that the aggressive mix of wet winters and record-breaking dry conditions fuel the climate change chaos. Correspondent Lauren Sommer for NPR’s climate desk highlights the room for improvement in LA, such as slowing urban sprawl and pursuing a wildfire plan for the entire community.
While Californians are suffering the consequences of environmental wreckage, Dungy’s poem can function as a confession of fear: everything she loves and admires and knows can disappear in an instant. It parallels the drama of T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men,” in which he declares: “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.” The difference, though, is that Dungy describes how it could happen—perhaps it doesn’t have to. By properly addressing the crisis and taking preventable measures, the beginning does not need to mean this end.