The Great Speckled Bird . . . Is a Robin?

I'd like to think this is the bird in the gospel song:

What a beautiful thought I am thinking
Concerning a great speckled bird.
It cometh descending from heaven
On the pages of God's holy word. 

However, having seen a nightmare version of a blue jay child in its early

adolescence, my guess is that the splotchity bird in the pic is a juvenile robin growing into her or his plumage. Birders, yea or nay?  I hope this guy only needs some Clearisil rather than major surgery or a feather transplant.

Poking and Prodding: e.e. cummings’ “O sweet spontaneous” and the Nature of Nature (and; un-Schooling

At Kensington Metropark the other day, I discovered an island hubbub, a rookery full of Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, and Cormorants. Below them Canada Geese squawked. Closer to shore, red winged blackbirds clung to reeds and half-seriously threatened me, I assume because of nearby nests. Two male geese squared off as if to fight—much hissing and honking in goose profanity, I'm sure. Later, two male redwings got into the longest physical squabble (maybe ten seconds) I’ve ever seen between two birds. At home, the wiser gold finches, doves, cardinals, and sparrows make only symbolic gestures of combat. 

 

My big birding day at Kensington got me thinking even more about spring and nature, and that reminded me of e.e. cummings’ poem,  “O sweet spontaneous,” in which he offers mockery and contempt for philosophy, science, and religion. Whatever those three endeavors might be, what they are not—and never will be—is spontaneous. They are considered, rehearsed, systematic invasions and perversions of nature, which is so magical and supra-rational that spring, season of rebirth and renewal, is the “rhythmic/lover” of death.

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2013/10/14

Nature is spontaneous in the sense that it simply is; it cannot be understood empirically. Philosophers and scientists are “prurient” and “naughty” voyeurs, while religionists try to knock nature around, “buffeting” it as they attempt to pull gods from its womb. Is that not a rather violent image of birthing, perhaps suggestive of abortion?

In the ongoing American hostility and debate about evolutionism vs. creationism, what might e.e. cummings say? And what might he say about religion in the schools? Would he tell us to avoid teaching philosophy, science and religion altogether?

As a poem, “O sweet spontaneous” is surely vulnerable to charges of oversimplification and sentimentality (that is, excessive or unearned emotional content).  Does it cross that line into touchy-feely, art-fart mush? Or does it try to demonstrate through simplicity its own argument that nature and the cosmos cannot be known in Academy-sanctioned curricula? 

Does the poem ask us to plop the kid in a field to witness the elk and experience snakebite? Shall we cancel science classes nationwide? What would a school run by cummings look like?

What would cummings do about climate change? Or cancer?

Would he argue that pantheism, animism, atheism and their ilk are also “prurient,” “naughty,” and “squeezing” and “buffeting”?  Do they too have “scraggy knees”? Or is it only mainstream schools of thought that are villains and morons? Kill the Presbyterian, let the hippie roam.

 

See how easy it is to take cummings to task? And aren’t his anti-traditional punctuation, capitalization, and diction rather juvenile, facile, disingenuous rebellions?

Or are they the most honest, urgent, cogent way to challenge authority? Maybe they demand that we experience the world as cummings does, unfettered by semicolons.

 

Whatever the case, when I’m having a good experience in nature, what I’m feeling feels unknowable—fwom de pwitty wittle finchee (change now to a baritone voice) to the big mean hawk that eats him (“the incomparable/couch of death”?).  What I’m experiencing might be such a vigorous firing of neurons, or such a jiggling of stardust as it wiggles with what I am, that no mere empirical Discipline can touch it.

Surely the solution is to invite politicians to write up an exam that tests a student’s life-essential knowledge at age 15. For if politicians don’t know what must be learned, who does? 

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2013/10/14

FROST'S DIMINISHED OVENBIRD: THE SMALL AND BROWN, THE FALLING

Golden-Crowned Kinglet, I think

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173533

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ovenbird/id

Early in my walk two weeks ago, before I came upon the garter snake, a sparrow-sized bird fluttered from a branch down to the brown leaves from the last few autumns. A second or two later, my brain registered that I'd seen some yellow on him. “Probably just another gold finch,” I thought, as I kicked myself for being jaded.

So I paused long enough for him to reappear, and indeed there was some yellow in his crown, yet he looked nothing like a gold finch. I'm pretty sure it was the golden crowned kinglet, a somewhat rare gift I came upon, near the same place about a year ago.

He flew off, and I figured the episode and my curiosity were finished. I came across the snake, got some pictures of him, plus a pair of blue jays, and had a pleasant walk.

Robin (American Thrush)

But when I got home, the bird with a yellow crown reappeared in my mind, and I got a little obsessive. I’ve had occasional luck with googling from faraway clues, so on a lark (terrible pun intended) I typed “golden-crowned sparrow,” and there he was—at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, of course. Unfortunately, he lives only on the west coast.

That could have been the end of the adventure, but the “Similar Species” included not only my guy, but also one of the warblers, called the ovenbird, which is the title critter of a Robert Frost poem. 

I figured I might as well reread Frost’s sonnet—it had been a long time, and some credible people have loved the poem. I liked it all right, especially the final line, which gives us calmly wonderful, troubling words and a big question:  what shall we “make of a diminished thing”?--such as a small, brown and mortal bird in a big forest where everything falls down sooner or later.

I love underdogs and other “diminished things.”  I probably think it’s immoral not to. Nobody needs more New York Yankees except for having a common enemy.

However, I also googled the big song of the little brown ovenbird; it’s anything but diminished. And he does have the minor glory of some yellow on his crown, which is more than most sparrows and wrens can say.

Song Sparrow (I think)

Then I struggled with some of Frost’s phrasing. His ovenbird says, “Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten,” which strikes me as a convoluted way to convey that spring has ten times more flowers than summer does. 

And what about this?

                            . . . the early petal fall is past

                When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

                On sunny days a moment overcast;

                And comes that other fall we name the fall.

    We can figure this out, but how important is it for the ovenbird to observe that rain brings down blossoms? Or the fact that birds and humans can deem rain odd if it happens on days that are mostly sunny, but yield to a “moment” of overcast skies and rain. True, that kind of rain is a bit rare, perhaps even sudden, unfair or precipitous, and Frost wants us to hear that the bird perceives this.

   Frost’s oven bird also understands that there are two or three falls:  the petals fluttering to the ground and “that other fall we name the fall.”  I’ll take Frost at his word that our less formal expression for autumn, “the fall,” comes from humans as we watch leaves fall—and perhaps life falling into winter death. But he might be making a rather big deal of this fairly old notion. Also, of course there's there's that third Fall, the one in Eden. How can I not hear the poem hinting at that? 

 

    But these concepts go at least as far back as Shakespeare, so I’m puzzled that Frost struggles to repeat them in a syntax I find somewhat labored. I wonder if he's sacrificed some clarity and perspective to the demands of the sonnet form (also, this is an unusual rhyme scheme for a Petrarchan sonnet—is that another result of a forced effort?).

    Yet, in spite of all my reservations, Frost saves the poem for me in two places. First, his oven bird notices “the highway dust is over all.” It's a small thing, but it adds to the poem's modernity, and it's slightly more original and less grand that the symbolic “fall” and falling business. 

    But the crowning blow, the home run, is Frost’s final line. Even if I wonder about its accuracy when applied to the ovenbird, I cannot fail to love the little bird’s phrasing in his question about himself and all of us, as he asks “what to make of a diminished thing.” 

   We all have been or will be diminished by nature’s seasons as well as the seasons in our individual lives, and I’ll bet every one of us has wondered, more than we admit, what to make of all that falling—spring petals, autumn leaves, little brown birds, ourselves.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173533

*

Snakes, Stealth, Beauty: Emily Dickinson, D.H. Lawrence, A.E. Stallings

In my April 5, 2014 post about Jamaal May's "Hum for the Bolt," we were feeling lightning’s sneaky approach, its skill at getting near us before we realize it, then flashing a bolt of awareness and probably fright. Speaking of sneaky things that can be scary, yesterday I got my first photos of a snake, an Eastern Garter Snake, so I’m offering these three poems about snakes. I’ve posted links to them before, but not recently, and each fine poem is worth revisiting: Emily Dickinson’s “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass,” D. H. Lawrence’s “Snake,” and A.E. Stallings’ “Momentary.” 
 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180204

http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/D.H._Lawrence/834

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243344

One oddity I’ve noticed about poets is their interest in and fondness for snakes and crows, two creatures most people fail to love. I wonder if poets and artists have a penchant for loving what the mainstream eschews or even despises and demonizes. Why might that be?

I’m having a lot more luck with liking crows than snakes, but the fellow I met yesterday demonstrated serpentine beauty more than any of the (very few) snakes I’ve seen before. His colors, his lines, his absolute silence and silky smoothness in movement were stunning. I was having a big moment, but he was perfectly casual. Maybe I bored him.

We looked at each other for several seconds. I had room to pass him on the left, but I figured he could whip around on me if he felt like it, and I didn’t know what kind of snake he was, had no idea about his the potential for venom—or simple pain. No one else was around.

Attractive, slender and modest, maybe three feet in length, he looked as un-menacing as a snake can, which to me is till pretty menacing. I know the experts say they’re more afraid of us, blah blah. Experts screw up all the time. Just ask GM, Wall Street, and M.D.s who can’t decide about Vitamin E or eggs.

Ever the comedian, I hissed at the garter snake to shoo him away from my path. He gave me a look. In Snake, I’m pretty sure he said, “Are you shitting me?”

So I was about to take my chances with stepping left, far left, when he slid away like poured oil.

Back at home, I went of course to Wikipedia, and found information about garter snakes that was absolutely fascinating. Rather than going on and on (who, me?), I encourage all to check it out. The infinite variety on this single planet is stunning—an old idea, but one that gets refreshed over and over if we shut up and look. And get lucky.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180204

http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/D.H._Lawrence/834

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243344

Jamaal May, "Hum for the Bolt": Lightning Reconsidered

Hum for the Bolt by Jamaal May : Poetry Magazine

Blurred Edges

“Hum for the Bolt” is the title poem of a first book by the

up and coming Detroit poet, Jamaal May. We can see “Hum for the Bolt” as a spring poem, but more importantly, it’s simply an excellent work that presents the speaker’s wish to be lightning, “the Bolt.” (It reminds me of Emily
Dickinson’s concept of the poem as a force that blows the top of her head off.  I also hear Coleridge concluding his portrait of the mysterious poet as prophet or deity in “Kubla Khan”:

            His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

            Weave a circle round him thrice,

            And close your eyes with holy dread

            For he on honey dew hath fed,

            And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Father and Son?

Coleridge’s poet is at least a shaman and perhaps a deity, yet Jamaal May’s image of the poet strikes me as new and credible, powerful and scary yet appealing.

I suppose the speaker could be just some guy, maybe a lover who wants to be flashy, like lightning, in order to be noticed; or he could be a stalker trying to be sneaky and unnoticed except for that instant of victory flash.

Ghost Plane, Avatar

But how many men want to be lightning? How many would choose lightning over silk that lies romantically against an arm or an arrow that whistles
on its way to the kill? He might

            .  .  . love to be
the silk-shimmer

            against
the curve of anyone’s arm,

            as
brutal and impeccable as it’d be to soar

            from
a crossbow with a whistle and have a man

            switch
off upon my arrival, it is nothing

But instead of lover or warrior, the speaker wants to be an illumination, scary and near. He
doesn’t just bring the light; he is the light “in this moment, in this doorway.” The immediacy, the Now is important. The poem messes with time and space: the flash is simultaneously “this far. . . . this close.”

Lover or stalker—what an excellent way to picture a poem, which was the communication, the light, we welcomed into living rooms and bedrooms before television came along. Maybe it is still the presence, power and magic that “eat the dark.”

Sneaky Enlightenment

Although the images of medieval warfare (“spaulder and
helm,” and maybe “have a man//switch off”) strike me as forced, I can live with them in exchange for the poem’s wonderful yet unexpected comparison of silk and water, or the rain that makes “a noisy erasure/of this town.” What does rain do if not erase towns—the edges and outlines of buildings and people. Yet I never
consciously thought of rainy cityscapes in that way. Again, the lightning replaces time and space with magic: “the flash that arrives//and leaves at nearly the same moment.”

May’s choice of “spaulder and helm” makes me realize once again that we don’t have to praise every inch of a poem or a person or the person’s oeuvre or a symphony or a country to say we like it. The more reasonable point is that we like plenty of what’s there. Maybe that’s what we should hope we can say about this day or this life. The bad or merely bland, boring moments might outweigh the good in simple-minded numbers, but there’s some good that keeps sneaking in for whose who can receive it, and some of it flashes like lightning, the fierce beauty and power of which cannot be measured or understood.

Boundaries

More Motel Charm, plus Mary Szybist's "Night Shifts at the Group Home"

Blue Traveler

In case you came for a poem, a discussion of Mary Szybist’s “Night Shifts in the Group Home” follows two brief travel notes from strange bedfellows on the internet. But play before work. For . . . charm? . . . the first note probably depends entirely upon high quality Kleenex. The second speaks for itself.

1     They were evaluating different TV providers so we had almost no channels all week. They paid for any guest to go see a movie in town as compensation . . . . If they get new mattresses, flat screen TVs and softer Kleenex the hotel will be up to the chain’s standards.

The Road

       2. I stayed in [that motel] for 3 days and i got bit up by bed bugs. i came back after christmas to his other motel and told him he called me a liar and didnt believe me. he said he just had it gone through and sprayed they didnt find any bed bugs. a few night later he comes to my room and chews me out telling the guys i work with about it. he said they came in with me my bag or clothes that it could have been a spider or somthing. i know that is not that case that it was his motel that i got bit up at and nothing came from my house or bags and i know it wasnt a spider. I dont appricate being called a lair or cussed out.

Convent or Group Home?

Night Shifts at the Group Home by Mary Szybist : The Poetry Foundation

The connection between motel visitors and group homes may seem thin and far-fetched, but think about it. In travel, our actual, current neighbors and our imagined past fellow travelers are arbitrarily appointed to
us, a little like the members of a group home—or boarding school, or college, or apartment building.

So the relationship between the speaker and the resident
in Mary Szybist’s “Night Shifts at the Group Home” is more universal than it might seem. The resident, apparently named Lily Mae, is some kind of patient, “older than my mother: manic, caught / up in gibberish,” while the speaker, a supervisor of some sort, a  protector and keeper of order, says, “I needed relief // from myself” and “I just didn’t love / my loneliness.”

Atlantic on Rocks, Manic, Caught Up in Gibberish

So the two end up in a somewhat forced intimacy in a single cot--the speaker’s.

Girls, Those Same Rocks

That’s a strange situation, but isn’t it just an extreme example of humans being thrown together in one or another kind of communal living? The lines and the idea I like best in this strange portrait are:

                   Sometimes
                   I imagine I 

                   was someone she won

                       at a fair as the wheel spun

     under the floating, unfaltering sun

                       

Feeling destiny cast her about like that, plus seeing herself as a doll-object in someone else’s view, plus being pulled from her lofty intellectualization into an awareness of separate selves as inarticulate bodies—all that adds up to a supra-rational liberation for the speaker. So yes, she ends up “undone,” but “happily” so.

Night Shifts at the Group Home by Mary Szybist : The Poetry Foundation

Grackle on Ice

MOTELS, BUGS, SLICES OF LIFE AND PIZZA, WORK

Server

In case you've come for a poem, here’s Detroit’s own Philip Levine on the subject of work, which seems relevant to motel dirt, as guest or as worker:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15319  

UFO Inspector

Kite Catcher

And Wind Catcher

But moving on to new topics . . .

In roaming on some internet travel sites, I’ve found a few entertaining details about motels in the nation’s major chains. Maybe I’ll just stay home, like the guy I know who carries sterilizing spray cans with him on the rare occasions when he travels and submits to the dangers of public lodging. He wipes the rooms clean, the way a cop show's CSI might.

I shouldn’t say aloud that I’ve never had experiences like his or those below. Then again, I wasn’t looking for germs. I wonder if that’s the secret: be willfully blind; bugs and human debris will always be with ye, but ye can choose whether and whither thy vision goest thither. If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. Etc.

By the way, I’m more interested in the reviewers than the motels, so I’ve kept the original authors’ words, spelling and punctuation for authenticity, and I have not disclosed the identity of individual motels or chains—it would be unfair (and libelous?) to cast a shadow on a business because of a single review. Besides, it’s been over a year since I started this project, so I no longer recall names or places; I have plausible deniability, which I’ve always wanted more than love or money or a good crop.   

I'm limiting myself to two of these per post:

            1.  Breakfast was bad and found a very old slice of pepperoni stuck on curtain in room
                 and food crumbs under furniture and beds.
   

            2.  I use to be an housekeeper and maintnance person at this [motel]. People                            complaining about overbooks its not this hotels fault. It is corporates fault. The manager,      Harry, hes not the nicest guy in the world, but at times he can be very helpful.  It's not the biggest pool ever and cleaning isnt always done the fastest but what do you expect from a small town like this?

      

River Guardian

Protectors of All?