I read this little piece in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine. It caught my attention because birds often grab my attention as well. Birds and bird images are staples of my poems. My bricked-in courtyard, with its protective maple, overhanging crepe myrtles and bushy archipelagos, is a bird sanctuary of nests, baths, forage, and feeders.
Over the years, my wife and I have stood transfixed at one window or another as hawks, buzzards, grackles, owls, jays, robins, sparrows, turtle doves, cardinals, finches, redbirds, bluebirds and hummingbirds compete for water, roost, nest materials, seed, and whatever else birds require, not to exclude privacy, security and space. We've watched as pairs of cardinals and turtle doves build nests and produce families, then as predators descend on the vulnerable young. We've enjoyed countless hours watching birds of all stripe and hue frolic (do birds frolic?) in the bird bath that is the altar of our courtyard's design. We've surrendered the space to them when it was clear they had more claim to it than we. And we've chased off the offenders, the marauders, the thieves with not a little hesitation, knowing that even the jay cruelly raiding the robin's nest is driven to it by nature and the same need to eat that we have.
So what does the Magazine's essay on bird watching have to do with this blog on poetry? As the above paragraph may imply, observation. Seeing the details. (Related: see the blog entry on observation for 1.23.19.) Which is the one thing that I try to impress on my Wednesdays@One cohort every week and in every poem. Write as broad brush as you like, thematically speaking. But get down to the detail. Only through significant detail can you access or express meaningful thought and feeling, the kind of thought and feeling that makes reading your poem worthwhile.
As a practice, I tend to overwrite first drafts of poems, to go heavy on imagery and the minutae of a scene, a field of perception (visual, oral-aural, gustatory, prehensile, olfactory). I put down on paper far more than the poem I'm trying to write can support. I know what I'm creating is a mini-encyclopedia of material from which I can make a poem in successive drafts. I make, in a first draft, a large block of granite or marble that successive drafting will chip away at until the shape emerges that the material and the heart "see" in potential.
It's this cataloguing approach that demands patient observation, like seeing and hearing the behaviors of the birds on my courtyard, and that stills me. This wild pandemic, that has harmed so many of us already, also offers opportunity. We can sit bored and restless, constantly at our screens following the latest tidbits of viral gossip and sniping, watching the graphs climb and fall and flatten, or we can embrace our enforced isolation, make something of it. We can slow our minds and attend to the worlds we live in, however constricted they may seem.
Over the years, my wife and I have stood transfixed at one window or another as hawks, buzzards, grackles, owls, jays, robins, sparrows, turtle doves, cardinals, finches, redbirds, bluebirds and hummingbirds compete for water, roost, nest materials, seed, and whatever else birds require, not to exclude privacy, security and space. We've watched as pairs of cardinals and turtle doves build nests and produce families, then as predators descend on the vulnerable young. We've enjoyed countless hours watching birds of all stripe and hue frolic (do birds frolic?) in the bird bath that is the altar of our courtyard's design. We've surrendered the space to them when it was clear they had more claim to it than we. And we've chased off the offenders, the marauders, the thieves with not a little hesitation, knowing that even the jay cruelly raiding the robin's nest is driven to it by nature and the same need to eat that we have.
So what does the Magazine's essay on bird watching have to do with this blog on poetry? As the above paragraph may imply, observation. Seeing the details. (Related: see the blog entry on observation for 1.23.19.) Which is the one thing that I try to impress on my Wednesdays@One cohort every week and in every poem. Write as broad brush as you like, thematically speaking. But get down to the detail. Only through significant detail can you access or express meaningful thought and feeling, the kind of thought and feeling that makes reading your poem worthwhile.
As a practice, I tend to overwrite first drafts of poems, to go heavy on imagery and the minutae of a scene, a field of perception (visual, oral-aural, gustatory, prehensile, olfactory). I put down on paper far more than the poem I'm trying to write can support. I know what I'm creating is a mini-encyclopedia of material from which I can make a poem in successive drafts. I make, in a first draft, a large block of granite or marble that successive drafting will chip away at until the shape emerges that the material and the heart "see" in potential.
It's this cataloguing approach that demands patient observation, like seeing and hearing the behaviors of the birds on my courtyard, and that stills me. This wild pandemic, that has harmed so many of us already, also offers opportunity. We can sit bored and restless, constantly at our screens following the latest tidbits of viral gossip and sniping, watching the graphs climb and fall and flatten, or we can embrace our enforced isolation, make something of it. We can slow our minds and attend to the worlds we live in, however constricted they may seem.
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