Blog Entry 1- Landscape in Alaskan Literature

The concept of landscape is a reoccurring theme in Alaskan Literature. Although the idea of landscapes is often used in fiction, oral histories, and non-fiction, I believe that the concept is most apparent in poetry. The way that an author uses landscape in their writing, can either add or detract from the reader's feeling towards the piece. If an author dislikes the Alaskan landscape, that feeling will reach the audience through the author's word choice and overall mood. We (most students of Eng 350) however, have the luxury of having some background knowledge of what Alaska's landscape is like before reading literature about the Arctic.

The benefit of being assigned The Last New Land as a course book, is that it is a collection of writings with various authors, time periods, writing styles, and landscapes (locations). As a modern reader of Alaskan literature living in Alaska, I can compare and contrast the stories by their location which gives me a greater understanding of where the author was coming from.

Just by comparing Joanne Townsend's "Looking Back I Remember", and Tim McNulty's "Radovin", I get the understanding that these two authors have vastly different interpretations of their surroundings. While Townsend appears to be more unsure and frightened by the nature around her, McNulty seems to look at some of the most simple things and find them to be filled with wonderment. In Townsend's writing she tries to imagine another reality other than the one she is living in, this is shown when she writes, "I dreamed forsythia, places where daffodils pushed through warm loam. The pussy willows brought false hope" (131). As she describes her surroundings such as "the frozen lake" and the people she compares to "pilgrims", her dislike of her surroundings is apparent. She seems to put herself and the people around her in the same role as pilgrims, inhabiting a lost land that they don't necessarily belong in while dreaming of her old life.

Tim McNulty's writing on the other hand is able to bring a poem to life with only the presence of an old miner's cabin. As McNulty look upon this cabin, he is able to evoke many images and relay them to the reader. By using such vivid descriptions of the cabin and the surrounding landscape, McNulty is able to allow the reader to picture this location in their mind and gain the same appreciation for the cabin.