Post 17 | State of the Planet

When reading “State of the Planet” I was intrigued by the incredible usage of poetry although found myself having trouble tracking with the overall message of the text. I am excited to see what the overall purpose of the text is tomorrow in class. I did however recognize some interesting aspects to the text which I took note of. Throughout the text Robert Hass, the author, almost refers to human life, or our planet as something being observed. The setting of this text is referred to as being on the fiftieth anniversary of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. I found this fact along interesting in that it may serve to show his intention when writing it. It seems he’s observing the Earth at the nearing of the end of another century. The first line says “October on the planet at the century’s end.” The rest of the text he continues to observe this planet, which is planet earth. I would focus on the body of the text although I am not interested in his many observation as much as I am interested in the purpose of his holding these observations. In the last section he refers to these observations we have as being potentially all a large dream. Is it possible that everything we know is a dream? Section ten says. “What is to be done with our species? Because we know we are going to die, to be submitted to that tingling dance of atoms once again. Its easy for us to feel that our lives are a dream-As this is, in a way, a dream: the flailing rain.” I feel an even deeper question than the object we are observing, which is earth, is why are we observing. “What is to be done with our species?” I have to continue to re-read this passage to fully understand. These are my initial reactions and questions when reading the first time.