Sunday Poetry XXXVI -- Textbook Poetry 3.7

Section VII wore me out.  I was interested for the first six poems, as all were about birds, and I thought perhaps an interesting and perhaps poetic motif might emerge.  Nope.  Just six excellent poems on birds and then – pff! – hodge-podge, and, as hodge-podge goes, bland.  Oh well.  Not bothering with the last poem of the book.  It annoyed me, and it’s long.  Instead three bird poems, all new to me and all quite enjoyable.  (Corbies are crows or ravens, by the way.)

An Approach to Literature

Brooks, Purser, Warren

1952

The Twa Corbies

Anonymous

As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies makin a mane;
The tane unto the ither say,
"Whar sall we gang and dine the-day?"

"In ahint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And nane do ken that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound an his lady fair."

"His hound is tae the huntin gane,
His hawk tae fetch the wild-fowl hame, 
His lady's tain anither mate,
So we may mak oor dinner swate."

"Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike oot his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair 
We'll theek oor nest whan it grows bare."

"Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken whar he is gane;
Oer his white banes, whan they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair."

The Oven Bird

Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says 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.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing. 

Gulls

William Carlos Williams

My townspeople, beyond in the great world,
Are many with whom it were far more
Profitable for me to live than here with you.
These whirr about me calling, calling!
And for my own part I answer them loud as I can,
But they, being free pass!
I remain! Therefore, listen!
For you will not soon have another singer

First I say this: You have seen
The strange birds, have you not, that sometimes
Rest upon our river in winter?
Let them cause you to think well then of the storms
That drive many to shelter. These things
Do not happen without reason.

And next thing I say is this:
I saw an eagle once circling against the clouds
Over one of our principal churches
Easter, it was a beautiful day!
Three gulls came from above the river
And crossed slowly seaward!
Oh, I know you have your own hymns, I have heard them
And because I knew they invoked some great protector
I could not be angry with you, no matter
How much they outraged true music

You see, it is not necessary for us to leap at each other,
And, as I told you, in the end
The gulls moved seaward very quietly.

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON and PRESTON/CHILD

"The Carolina Parrot,"
by John James Audubon

I just now noticed, flitting over to Google.com for a moment to look something up, that today is the birthday of John James Audubon.  Normally, I don't take more than passing note of whoever's birthday it is that Google happens to be celebrating on any given day, however, this time, it happens to coincidentally coincide with the popcorn novel I'm currently reading, Fever Dream, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, who are, as it happens, my favorite popcorn novelists.

(I've been reading the Preston/Child books for so long--sheesh, something like fifteen years now--that opening their newest Pendergast novel is a little like a reunion with old friends, my two personal favorites of which are, of course, Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast, FBI, and Lieutenant Vinnie D'Agosta, NYPD.  As far as the books themselves are concerned, and with the slight exception of a very few missteps on the authors' parts, the stories are fast, fun, gripping, and surprisingly literary.)

The plot of this particular contribution to the series is bent around the late, great John James Audubon and his treatment of the Carolina Parrot, as well as a lost painting of his called "The Black Frame," so-called because no one knows it's actual subject and, which, if you're interested, is an invention of the authors.  As you read this very post (anyone, anyone?) I'm nearing the end of the book (trying to slow down and savor it, for it will be another year or more before their next effort is released in paperback), which happens to be their best in quite a few years.  And as before (I'm thinking particularly of one piano composer and savant, Charles-Valentin Alkan), the authors have sparked in me interest in an area, albeit highly specialized, where I'd previously only spent little time.

Regardless of plot and the "literariness" of this particularly esoteric popcorn, the birds and wildlife of Mr. Audubon are fascinating, and, nostalgically speaking, have always held company in my memory and imagination with Norman Rockwell, as  both painters were on regular display via gigantic coffee table books at my grandparents' homes.

an excellent online gallery for John James Audubon

Jane Eyre [30] -- chapter 29: MARSH END

1. "Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there firm as weeds among stones."
2. "Paste" for the pies sounds rather nasty to our modern, American ears, and I have never heard it used as such before.  Before I check the etymology, however, let me go over this: paste is awfully close to pastry, which indeed is word commonly used to describe the stuff for pie crust, among other things, and both paste and pastry are similar to pasta, which is more than just noodles, but the dough from which they're made.  Makes sense, I think.  The etymologies: pasta, pastry, paste (which has a rather humorous later usage).
3. The casual, classic good looks of Mr. St. John are an interesting contrast to the forceful, oft brutal, "manliness" of Rochester.
4. Issue of grammar: "Now you may eat, though still not immoderately."  
5. Is it a philanthropist who helps one find gainful employment?
6. "My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you, as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a half-frozen bird some wintry wind might have driven through their casement" (emphasis added).

Sunday Poetry XII (and Jane Eyre XXVIII) -- JANE EYRE IS A BIRD

For brevity's sake, I am not including the full poems I reference here.  Also, and as I've done before (even just last week), I'm going to leave the majority of dot-connecting to you.

The topic comes from our most recent Jane Eyre installment, chapter 27, which in its reference to birds as "emblems of love" throws back in a contrary manner (opposite really, but birds still the same) to chapter 1, where Jane is reading from Bewick's History of British Birds.  Before we get into the direct application to the book, however, I want to look at some more birds.


Birds, symbolically, are a lot like that of trees, at least on the positive end of things, where they can represent nature and God (often, and particularly in the case of Jane Eyre, the same thing) and love, and, in their movement between earth and Heaven, they can represent prayer and angels or spirits.  However, they have a freedom impressionistically lacking in trees, and their folkloric connection to deity is stronger than that of trees.  (Look at Quetzalcoatl and, on the less dramatic side, Mr. Stork -- video below.)

There is also a darker element to birds, which seems more appropriate, at least by first impression, to Jane Eyre.  Birds are often carrion eaters--consumers of the dead.  Blend this with their naturally spiritual element, and you have a symbol well worthy of Jane Eyre, and particularly chapter 1.  Crows, owls, vultures, etcetera are not birds associated with that which is pleasant and beatific and uplifting.  I posted this picture yesterday:

Here a man--one unlucky soul from the Book of Samuel--after being stoned gets taken apart by the birds.  It reminds me of that moment in Pirates of the Caribbean shortly before Jack SPARROW escapes (see? "sparrow": freedom -- though also, perhaps, idiocy -- in that name) where we see crows poking at the eye of some woebegone sailor in a cage.

Gustave Dore'

Pirates and birds, not to mention the illustrator of the above engraving, Gustave Dore (one of my very favorite illustrators, by the way, and thank goodness he was so spectacularly prolific!), brings us to Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (short version HERE; complete poem HERE (and, really, read the whole thing; it's worth it and will only put you out about ten or fifteen minutes).  Here we see the curse that follows the destruction of nature, and in this case, an albatross, symbol of good fortune as well as symbol of Jesus Christ (consider its shape against the sky, sun up and behind it, viewed from the deck of a ship far below).

What interests me here is the combination of hopefulness (the albatross as Christ) with the migratory nature, almost aimlessness, of the sea bird.  This and other sea birds are the subject of the chapter of Bewick's, which young Jane Eyre is reading.  But what about the most recent chapter we've read, where the birds are all about the Love?

Certainly that--love--fits birds just fine.  Read the smackingly sappy (sorry) Ode to a Nightingale, by Keats: HERE.

Note the mention of the dryad in the first stanza: bolster, as if it were needed, to the connection mentioned above between birds and trees (beside the fact that so many birds frickin' LIVE in trees!).

Joseph Severn

While I think these two poems do a good job reflecting at least a little of what Bronte was intending in their respective chapters, it does little to make connection between the two, because birds are such facile and even capricious symbols; they can be practically anything.  But perhaps if we forget about the individual symbolics of specific species or varieties, then we might make a general definition for birds (easy -- they fly, right? and flying is freedom, unfettered and irresponsible), and apply it to Jane.

Look at her circumstances in each chapter as they apply to freedom.  In chapter 1, she craves it, but freedom appears to be impossible, unreachable; hence the birds are dark, migratory, and carnivorous--drawn haunts of the derelict and dead.  In chapter 27, she is faced with the necessity of taking up her a new and undesired freedom, but she doesn't want to go!  She sees love--tweedly little birds, cute and white (I'm making that up)--but it, the love, is as unreachable--keen to fly just beyond her grasp--as was freedom back at the beginning.

Maybe this is stretching, but it works.  Birds are such instinctive symbols that, I think, even if Bronte didn't intend their application here, it works nonetheless.  What might not work, though I'm putting it out there anyway, is Jane's name:

JANE EYRE.  (And this is how totally I am going from the mark.  Read Ancestry.com's derivation of the last name Eyre, from Ayer: "English: from Middle English eir, eyer ‘heir’ (Old French (h)eir, from Latin heres ‘heir’). Forms such as Richard le Heyer were frequent in Middle English, denoting a man who was well known to be the heir to the main property in a particular locality, either one who had already inherited or one with great expectations.")  But say the last name aloud.  Eyre.  Say it.  Eyre; Air.  Birds!  Jane Eyre is a bird, folks!  Take her first name (which means gracious and merciful, by the way) and we've really got a pretty good description of Jane's character: a forgiving and benevolent bird.  Does she not travel here and there spreading the good of her soul?

I welcome you thoughts.