Plan -

Intro – CVPG demonstrates mankind at war with nature, but Fireflies has a more nuanced approach
suggesting simultaneously that nature lives alongside man peacefully but has also been
domesticated by humanity

1 – CVPG, man in conflict with nature

2 – FF, man has dominated and tried to order the world, but nature remains

3 – FF this nature seems to bring a new less ordered dimension to human life

Conclusion – in CVPG mankind is wholly at war with nature with no sign of reconciliation, or do they?
He is letting it grow back and knows it will return, so the primary difference is really that fireflies
accept nature cannot be fully dominated and CVPG tries to do some with futility

Both “Chainsaw vs the pampas grass” and “fireflies” demonstrate different views on human
interaction with the natural world around us. “Fireflies” articulates a world in which humanity has
tried, as ever, to dominate and order the natural world beyond any shadow of doubt, “Chainsaw vs
the pampas grass” on the other hand demonstrates a seemingly much simpler much simpler opinion
of the interaction between humanity and nature, seemingly only touching on the violent domination
and violation of the purity of nature by humanity, however, the ending of the poem demonstrates a
different dimension to its viewpoint, that humanities battle against nature cannot be won, that
nature will always recover, and that, as in “Fireflies” the only way to “win” this battle is too let
nature flourish alongside the ordered world of humanity.

The conflict between man and nature is evident within “Chainsaw vs the pampas grass” from the
very beginning of the poem, the anthropomorphising of the chainsaw creating the feeling of a
violent bloodthirsty creature, set on the domination of nature. The chainsaw does not simply have
blades, it has “teeth”, “grinding... in a plastic sleeve”. The use of human anatomy to describe the
machine parts of the chainsaw not only adds a horrific element of body horror imagery to the poem,
but also highlights the idea of the chainsaw as a microcosm for the more violent, ignorant elements
of humanity, the narrator of the poem possibly acting as the more watchful element of the human
societal consciousness whilst the chainsaw acts as a condensing of the uniquely human will to
dominate present, playing the part of all those who would violate every natural space for the sake of
progress, or perhaps simply out of spite. This idea is further compounded by the Chainsaw’s “grand
plan to kick back against nail or knot and rear up into the brain” of the speaker. This line conveys the
chainsaw almost as a separate thinking entity, bound to the narrator by some invisible control,
wishing, like so Djinn trapped within a lamp, to escape and annihilate its own master despite the
aforementioned speaker being the only one who can bring it too life. This deeply self-destructive
desire to destroy the one who wields it once again hints towards the idea of the chainsaw
representing the member of society who would have us tear nature down, it does not care for the
consequences of its actions just as they do, as like the chainsaw killing its wielder would render it
once again “unplugged”, our destruction of nature would doom us to extinction. But more than
simply committing an act of physical violence against the grass, the chainsaw seems to violate it on a
deeper level, the speaker going into detail about how it “ripped into pockets of dark, secret
warmth”, how “plant juice spat from pipes and tubes”, this dark organic imagery lends and ever
more powerful living quality to the grass, and specifically it creates almost genital imagery,
suggesting that what the chainsaw is doing is an ever deeper and more disgusting violation of
natural purity than a purely physical assault, like the raping of something pure, the utter obliteration
of its sanctity.

However, the ending of the poem conveys a more nuanced message around this earlier hideous
defacement of the grass, for “in the weeks that came new shoors like asparagus tips sprung”, and by
“June” the grass was “corn in Egypt”, “wearing a new crown”. Despite its defiling at the hands of the
chainsaw and the speaker, though that speaker always seems somehow removed from the actions
of the chainsaw as if even he does not have complete Control of its workings, the grass has returned
in plenty. Specifically, the biblical reference that refers to the grass as “corn in Egypt” suggests that
somehow this re birth was willed by divine powers as this in fact makes reference to a story in the
bible in which god commanded corn to grown in Egypt to save Joseph. This idea that the re birth of
the grass was not just the way of nature but specifically God willed suggests that the task of the
chainsaw is a fruitless on that it is condemned simply to its hatred, to “grind” its teeth in that “plastic
sleave” whilst the grass springs back up, nothing it can do to stop it. In this way “Chainsaw vs the
pampas grass” creates an interesting balance between the power of mankind, its hate fuelled
domination of nature, and the very power of nature itself to persists even after the horror of such
horrific machine assaults. Fireflies paints an equally interesting and nuanced picture of the
relationship between man and nature, specifically bringing attention to the idea of nature thriving
even in the ordered channels of a world made for and dominated by humans. At the entrance of the
poem mankind holds “dark dominion” over the landscape, everything so “punctual and in place”,
that “nothing will go astray”. This imagery is almost reminiscent of the opening of “London”, calling
back to the same ideas of nature’s sadly “chartered” state. This imagery creates a similar affect, the
idea of some suburban neighbourhood so perfectly mapped out as to have pushed nature from the
world, the natural world suffocated and pushed out of the land it once roamed by man’s ceaseless
ordered expansion into the wild. It seems as if nothing can “go astray” from the careful designs of
the city planners, nothing organic or natural can survive in this concrete, asphalt wasteland, “the
streetlamps promise”.

However, as the poem continues a different truth is revealed. Just as the end of “Chainsaw vs the
pampas grass” demonstrates a more nuanced idea of the relationship between man and nature
rather than simply a one-sided domination, here however nature does not simply recover whilst
mankind bides its time, but instead it actively finds ways to thrive even in the harsh order of human
civilisation, the “fireflies” that are its central focus acting perhaps as an extended metaphor for all
the creatures of the world that find some way to thrive among steel and plastic just as they did when
they were surrounded by wood and rock, an angle that is both tragic for the destruction of nature,
and simultaneously through its championing of nature’s ability to persist even beyond its original
habitat. In fact, the language used to describe the “fireflies” suggests something, it pushes gently at
the idea that however much humanity builds up the world around us, we will still be entranced by
those glimmers of nature we have not obliterated as we “are loath to miss such jauntiness in
nature”. The use of the word “jauntiness” here possibly suggests the idea that despite its seeming to
lose the battle against humanity, at least for now, nature will always continue to strive forwards,
simply because it must, with the word adding an optimist to its quest, for all the forcers that push
against it moves forwards as it always has, happily, in the mind of the speaker, for all it has been set
back. Moreover, the language used to describe the fireflies suggests the idea that nature is superior
to mankind's own creations, specifically the speaker draws a parallel between the lights of the street
lights and the lights of the fireflies, where the “porch lamps” are boring, monotonous creations of
humanity the fireflies are fascinating to the speaker, the human lights “promise” boredom and
monotony but the fireflies “titillate creation” itself, they arouse memories of true “chaos and old
night”, that remind the speaker of what the world was before humanity steam rolled it into the
ground with industry. And yet in “fireflies” nature persists, even if only in the “sportive abortive
clumsy” twinkling of fireflies, nature lives alongside mankind, striving, ever-present at the moment
of its own destruction, ever eternal, the light that reminds modernity of the truth of nature’s
continues existence, that it cannot be snuffed out, whether it survives alongside mankind as in
“fireflies” or rises from the quite literal ashes of its destruction as in “Chainsaw vs the pampas grass”
every time it is cut down, enduring with true life, whilst that which brough it destruction simply
“seethes”, never acquiring true life, managing only to cling to “the seamless urge to persist”, not
creating anything new, simply surviving and destroying in turn.

Both “Fireflies” and “Chainsaw vs the pampas grass” demonstrate interesting and nuanced views of
the relationship between mankind and nature, with both highlighting nature’s ability to persist in the
modern world, and in fact both poems remind of the line that opens Ted Kaczinski's magnum opus
manifesto, “The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human
race”. In both poems mankind's development is disastrous for nature, overtly in “Chainsaw vs the
pampas grass” through obscene violence and violation of natural purity, in a burst of “instant rage”,
and covertly in “Fireflies” through the dull domestication of a world painfully “punctual and in
place”. Nature rises above mankind in both poems, for it all it might be cut down it will rise again,
“wearing a new crown”.