By Toby Izenberg
Edited by Rachel Barker and Louane Biquin
Published in his 1962 collection Fully Empowered, Pablo Neruda’s poem “In Praise of Ironing” invokes the smoothing of the earth’s surfaces as a metaphor for art. His speaker declares that “poetry is pure white,” a piece of cloth emerging “from water covered with drops… wrinkled all in a heap” (Neruda, lines 1-3). The act of ironing symbolically describes the process of creation, in which “the skin of this planet” is “spread out” and “the sea’s whiteness” is “ironed out” (lines 4-5). P.K. Page’s glosa, borrowing the fourth through seventh lines of the poem, literalizes Neruda’s metaphor. In “Planet Earth,” “the sea in its whiteness” is the literal sea, and the “holy surfaces” are imagined as actual landscapes (Page, lines 10, 20). Robert Lecker notes that “every glosa implies a heuristic commentary, a gloss on the borrowed” (86). By reversing Neruda’s metaphor to engage with the earth itself as the object of her writing, Page establishes the physical planet’s primacy at the core of her poetic vision. With careful attention to language and an eye toward the Western poetic tradition, “Planet Earth” reimagines artistic obligation as a duty continuously carried out through embodied, devotional, and creative action in service of the natural world.
Though the poem focuses on the literal landscape, “Planet Earth” still utilizes metaphor as a central poetic device. Page imagines the “skin of this planet” as fabric to be “stretched,” “soaked,” “spread out,” “washed,” “starched,” “smoothed,” and “pressed into neatness” (lines 7, 10, 16, 18). The poem imagines care for the natural world to be as meticulous, repetitive, and diligent a process as the treatment and maintenance of textiles. The speaker’s lilting, alliterative language dreamily evokes the affectionate intimacy associated with attentively washing cloth, “like a laundress loves her linens,” “knowing their warp and woof,” the planet “has to be loved” and “celebrated” (lines 1, 3, 8). Page’s speaker is insistent on a careful, delicate handling of the Earth’s fabric: it must be cared for “like a lover coaxing, or a mother praising,” “smoothed with the hand,” and imbued with “loving caresses” (lines 4, 18, 39). In the face of environmental degradation, pollution, and the violent extraction of natural resources, imagining the planet as a precious textile emphasizes its fragility, beauty, and indispensability. Page’s language suggests an insistence on not only careful but loyal, devotional attentiveness, on the level of a mother or romantic partner.
The notion of devotion can also be interpreted in a religiohistorical context, lending spiritual gravity to Page’s call for planetary care. Borrowing from Neruda’s lines, the speaker describes hands “smoothing the holy surfaces” (line 40). Page’s speaker draws upon a multivalent tradition of subservience to the divine to craft her devotional vision. Like “In Praise of Ironing,” “Planet Earth” is a praise poem, part of a genre in English that can be traced back to the odes and eulogies of Medieval and Renaissance poetry. Praise poetry expresses admiration, gives homage, or affirms the goodness of its subject, often a hero, king, or deity. The tradition is as old as English literature itself—the oldest extant poem in the English language, composed by English monk and scholar Bede, depicts an exuberant expression of divine acclaim, glorifying God as the creator of the universe (Bede 31). Breaking from a specifically Christian framework, however, the speaker in “Planet Earth” evokes the ode form to praise the planet itself with a rapturous exclamation: “O this great beloved world and all the creatures in it” (Page, line 9). The poem also draws on the medieval tradition of illuminare, or “lighted up” manuscripts embellished by monks with gold leaf, illuminating and elevating sacred texts (Minneapolis Institute of Art). The speaker references this artistic tradition when she dictates that the Earth’s “skin” “be made bright” “till it shines in the sun like gold leaf” (Page, lines 31-32). Like gold leaf on parchment, adorning the Earth in gold exalts the planet through principles of Medieval illuminare; through the poet’s praise, the planet itself is elevated to a sacred status. Page even engages with texts at the birth of Western literature; the speaker’s reverent evocation of the “protean, wine dark, grey, green, sea” conjures the luminance of Homer’s oînops póntos, or ‘wine-face sea’ and the shape-shifting elusivity of the many-formed sea god Proteus (Page, lines 21-22). By connecting her praises to a long, hallowed history of poetic devotion, Page announces clearly the sacred importance of her poetic project.
While “Planet Earth” certainly draws on religious themes, it is not a religious poem. The poem rejects traditional notions of divinity, forgoing reverence to a higher, anthropomorphic God. Page herself once wrote it was “strange that we imagine a bearded man” when contemplating the divine (“Alphabetical” 126). In the poem’s most direct theological reference, the speaker declares that “Seraphim will stop singing hosannas/to shower it [the earth] with blessings, blissings, and praises,” while “Archangels” will divert from their heavenly duties to “attend to its metals/and polish the rods of its rain” (lines 33-36). Summoning images from a vast history of spirituality in Medieval, Greek, and Renaissance art, “Planet Earth” sanctifies the planet as a sacred object in and of itself, infusing its “holy surfaces” with divine importance. In doing so, Page’s speaker embodies what Barbara Kelly Peace and Kelly Parsons, in their essay “Seeing with the Eyes of the Heart: Praise, Shadow and Dimensions of Eternity in the Poetry of P. K. Page,” call a “spiritual ecology,” or an expression of poetic, spiritual consciousness “that serves the planet, that serves life” (Peace & Parsons 39). The poem’s spiritual ethos is thus unique in that it combines ecocritical consciousness with visions of divinity; it connects the earth’s vitality to the processes sustaining feelings of love, devotion, and duty. The result is a call for environmental action that remains deeply human.
Through its grammatical structure, too, “Planet Earth” insists on the Earth’s primacy. Utilizing Neruda’s command phrase “has to be,” (Neruda, line 5) Page’s speaker insists, to name a few examples, that the earth “has to be loved,” “has to be made bright,” and “has to be celebrated” (Page, lines 1, 31, 8). These sentences are written in the passive voice, beginning with the object (“it”) and moving to the action phrase (“has to be loved”), excluding the subject entirely. Page overturns the normal grammatical subject-object relationship in which the subject exercises agency in relation to the passive, acted-upon object. Grammatically prioritizing the planet over its caretakers, Page thus decenters the praise-poet speaker and emphasizes the object of praise, insisting on its primacy. Praise is not the obligation of the ‘artist’ alone; however, by foregoing mention of a specific subject, the speaker calls upon humanity in its entirety to fulfill its sacred responsibilities. Page’s grammatical choices also respond implicitly to Neruda’s conception of the artist-figure. While Neruda’s speaker asserts that “hands are creating the world” (line 9), imagining the poet as a maker of worlds, Page’s speaker imagines a subject who cleans, caresses, praises, and paints the pre-existing planet.
As the form requires, Page’s glosa literally expands Neruda’s poem. Additionally, it elaborates on his notions of domestic duty. Through her insistence on care, Page emphasizes planetary preservation as an ongoing, routinely practiced responsibility. The repeated imagery surrounding domestic care—“washing,” “ironing,” and “smoothing”—suggest a view of the Earth as a house or home where seemingly mundane acts of domestic upkeep are necessary to sustain a nurturing and safe environment. In “In Praise of Ironing,” Neruda praises ironing as a necessary act of renewal, along with “the swirl” of laundry, from which “pure innocence returns” (lines 12, 14). Neruda’s perspective is that of a person unlikely to perform these tasks himself; his speaker focuses on their regenerative potential and overlooks the monotony and mundanity of domestic work. Page’s speaker, on the other hand, is carefully attentive to the meticulous, mechanical, and dull process of necessary upkeep; the poem’s anaphoric list of tasks (“it must,” “it has to be”) calls to mind a to-do list of chores, a steady reminder of routine obligations.
Page’s poem suggests that the Earth itself is a shared dwelling, a space of belonging that requires consistent care and praise. Additionally, it suggests that fulfilling this responsibility to the planet requires the personal, tangible expression of one’s obligation, symbolized in “Planet Earth” through touch. The interaction between “a laundress” and “her linens” is a tactile one; the poem’s focus on physical contact (“polished,” “smoothed with the hand,” “burnished and rubbed/by hands that are loving”) emphasizes the immediate, powerful intimacy of a physical, tactile relationship (lines 1, 12, 18, 25-26). Page’s speaker is careful, however, to distinguish her use of touch from notions of dominance, ownership, or lust found in the English poetic tradition. Popularized by Petrarch, the traditional literary blazon “catalogues the physical attributes of a subject, usually female,” dismantling and objectifying the subject in the service of poetic yearning and praise (Poetry Foundation). Page’s language may initially seem to echo this tradition, the archetypal landscape-as-feminine body “stretched and stroked” by the conquering male poet (line 7). Upon closer inspection, however, Page’s subject is feminized, in fact evoking a plurality of gentle, caretaking female figures—“a mother praising,” “a lover coaxing,” a laundress washing, and a seamstress sewing (line 4). Through the removal of the male subject, Page’s speaker rejects the Petrachan desire to possess the object of praise. Rather, Page imagines praise as a selfless affirmation, both reverent and loving. In one of the poem’s most powerful and rhythmically reverberant moments, Page’s speaker alludes to such a relationship’s reciprocity:
and the stars keep on shining
within and above
and the hands keep on moving
(lines 24-30).
Nurturing the planet is both a form of healing and of renewal. Through the act of care, the passage suggests, one tends not only to the natural world but the world “within”; the caretaker’s hands move in tandem with the natural beauty they work to maintain, weaving together home and self in a symbiotic mosaic of fabric.
Of course, “Planet Earth” does not suggest that its readers should literally “polish” trees and “smooth” lakes; rather, the poem evokes physical contact as a symbolic representation of attention, praise, and reciprocal care. Beyond its literal definition, the notion of touch can be extended beyond the realm of the physical, encompassing a humbling, profound, and sacred sense of connection with one’s place in the world. Through its deep engagement with the practice of artistic representation, “Planet Earth” suggests that creating art is itself a way of “smoothing the holy surfaces”; a practice through which one demonstrates their love and devotion, weaving themselves and their planet together in a mutual, caring relationship. When, at the end of the poem, Page’s speaker asserts that “newly in love,/we must draw it and paint it,” she produces an account of what art is for—not the satisfaction or reflection of the artist but rather “loving caresses” (lines 37-39). In other words, “Planet Earth” demands humility; it calls on us to act in service of a greater tapestry.
Works Cited
Bede, the Venerable, Saint. “An Ecclesiastical History of the English People.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature 11(A), edited by Stephen Greenblatt, James Simpon, and Julie Orlemanski, W.W Norton & Company, 2024: 31-32.
“Blazon.” Glossary of Poetic Terms, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/blazon. Accessed 18 Apr. 2025.
Lecker, Robert. “P.K. Page’s Inebriate: A Gloss on a Glosa.” ESC 45(4), Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English, December 2019: 83–99.
Neruda, Paublo. “In Praise of Ironing.” 1962. Fully Empowered, translated by Alastair Reid, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
Page, P.K.. “Alphabetical.” Planet Earth: Poems Selected and New, Porcupine’s Quill, 2002.
Page, P.K.. “Planet Earth.” Hologram, Brick Books, 1994.
Peace, Barbara & Parsons, Kelly. “Seeing With the Eyes of the Heart: Praise, Shadow, and Dimensions of Eternity in the Poetry of P.K. Page.” P.K. Page: Essays on her Works, edited by Linda Rogers, Barbara Colebrook Peace, Guernica, 2001: 37-40.