american nature poetry

expressions of the underlying cultural concern?

snippets:

RIPRAP

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles

(...)

Gary Snyder (*1930)

or,

Rock and Hawk

Here is a symbol in which
Many high tragic thoughts
Watch their own eyes.

(...)

Life with calm death; the falcon's
Realist eyes and act
Married to the massive

Mysticism of stone,
Which failure cannot cast down
Nor success make proud.

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)