Development, in California, means the building of homes, the imposition of landscaping. the digging of pools. Development in California means controlling what exists and creating something new, something only the diversion of rivers for the maintenance of reservoirs can sustain.
Development in California means the mass irrigation of newly planted lawns. Houses, houses everywhere and not a wild mustard field to see. Not even the acres of organized agriculture that first moneyed the region survive. The City of Orange in Orange County kept an orange tree in a fenced area, one skinny-branched specimen saved to represent the fields for which the region was named. I grew up on a street called Bluff View in the midst of California's ambition for development. When I write poems about nature, I am writing poems about loss. I am writing poems about discovering home where home has been replaced by structures I do not Want to recognize. The place I was born into no longer exists. I don't have a town I can call home. Unless language is home. Unless, when I write. What had slipped away is found.
In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the poet uses the lines "Water, water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink" to contrast the salt water surrounding a ship at sea with the sailors' need for drinking water.
In paragraph 3, how does the author's allusion to Coleridge's poem ("Houses, houses everywhere and not a wild mustard field to see.") help convey her views on development?
1. It serves as a metaphor for a sense of anger and frustration.
2. It shows there is a connection between the problems of the past and the problems of the present.
3. It references the increased need for water that results when more houses and other structures are built.
4. It highlights the irony of a situation in which something perceived as a benefit may not be beneficial after ally