Fluttering Things (Hawk Owl Publishing, 2024) by Richard Pope is a chapbook featuring poetry about birds. The theme itself is an encapsulation of why poetry exists: to capture slivers of reality in words. Nothing could be more fitting to illuminate poetry’s telos than birds, those flitting, hyperactive songsters who go about their lyrical day above – literally – all the cares and schemes and sorrows of mankind.
The natural thematic sympathy of birds with poetry extends further when we consider the aural nature of both. While it is true poetry can be read silently, and while it is true there is deaf poetry which uses sign language (concerning which I have a humorous personal anecdote to share someday), most poetry for most people has a vocal component which is vital to the medium. Though largely composed in free verse, Pope makes use of common poetic tools like rhyming and alliteration. He also tries to capture the diverse sounds of birds chirping.
From “The Great Blue Heron,”
He notices and
baulks.
SQUAAAWK!
Frantic flapping
feathers drifting down
And again from “Considerable Speaks Winter Wrens,”
I pick up action
a darting in or out
shrews
or mice
or the like
seeking cover
no doubt.
Hrrrrrrrr.
Certain something has just darted in
The 73-page softcover text is amply illustrated with images appropriate to the various poems; a barred owl graces a piece of the same name, just as a bald eagle makes an appearance in a poem on his sort. More or less evenly split, the images are either watercolors or photography from various private collections. As the author states in his introductory remarks, his friend Neil Broadfoot had planned to do watercolor illustrations for this book. However, he died suddenly as this text was being written. What is printed in our collection are the rough drafts of his watercolors. Still and all, those rough drafts are well suited for such a project as this. In fact, their incompleteness jives well with the ambiguity necessary for poetry to properly speak.
The vocation of the poet and the vocation of the bird are similar. That birds indeed spend a great deal of their billable hours living above us invites a meditation on perspective which is natural to the poet.
In “Tiny Workmen” Pope finishes by saying,
They pass each other not a wingspan apart no halt no surprise no flinch no flap no pecking no posturing no aggression or even acknowledgment at all just two busy workmen passing on the job plenty of food for everyone no cause to fear I often think birds have the right idea.
As we read these closing lines we are reminded of Matthew Arnold’s “Lines Written In Kensington Gardens,”
I, on men's impious uproar hurl'd, Think often, as I hear them rave, That peace has left the upper world And now keeps only in the grave. Yet here is peace for ever new! When I who watch them am away, Still all things in this glade go through The changes of their quiet day. Then to their happy rest they pass! The flowers upclose, the birds are fed, The night comes down upon the grass, The child sleeps warmly in his bed.
Poetry cannot be enjoyed in a rush. It necessarily requires a calm spirit and stopped watch. Only in such an environment can the depths of the poem be heard. In “The Great Blue Heron” Pope describes watching the poem’s namesake for a lengthy period of time. We know time is stretching out by the writer’s mention of, “crawfish tiptoe[ing],” “a sleepy lily pad,” and, indulging in assonance, “sections of a small sleek watersnake slide slowly gliding soundless out of sight.” Our inner clocks having been retuned on the trail of this heron, Pope concludes,
This morning
all my former life seems barren
and I really wish I were a Great Blue Heron
The similarity between the bird and the poet extends in Fluttering Things to play, for once the calm necessary for the poetic enterprise is established it naturally develops into play. What is it to play? To play is to do something for the sheer pleasure of it, not for some secondary end, not for some causal benefit, and not for obligation.
In “Tumblers” Pope says,
Two other reckless rascals
following suit
break off their social soaring
and start their assent
Oh, the jet black devils!
They know how to have fun
These imps
are the otters
of the avian sporting world.
But it is not all whimsy and games in the world of birds, for we all must eat. In “Migizi, The Bald Eagle From the Top of Goose Rock” we have an encounter between an hungry eagle and an absent-minded gull too lost in his thoughts to notice the repeated sallies of Migizi.
We anxiously read,
Far below Gayaashk is dreaming along
unaware that Migizi is back
The eagle stoops and plummets down on the gull.
At the very last instant,
Gayaashk veers sharply left
then continues drifting
serene in his thoughts.
Ah, perhaps we’ve been too rash with the bird-brained; perhaps we’ve mistaken their monastical contemplation for dullness. We all must eat, yes, but in this poem at least one eagle goes hungry.
“Daniel’s Island In Lac LaCroix” and “Woodcock Explosion” return to the sensory mein of birds, audible and colorful.
From the former we consider sound,
Tiny bright yellow birds
tear up and down the island
with mad, reckless speed,
landing only to throw back their heads,
and rid themselves of bursts of pent-up song.
I think of mystical Isiah when I read this verse. He says in chapter fifty-eight, “Cry out full-throated, unsparingly; lift up your voice like a trumpet blast.” Song is an energy which wells up from the bird and must be let out.
As for “Woodcock,” we consider the opposite of musical notice, we consider camouflage.
Pope writes,
[I] step on a mine
that blasts at my knees
and a flash of rust and a long comic beak
careens off wildly
and zigzags through the trees
Fluttering Things is broken up into two parts. The first section is entitled “Sketches,” the second, “Meditations.” With the poem “Woodcock Explosion” having sufficiently introduced us to the vitality, exuberance, and diversity of the bird kingdom, this second section places more pronounced attention on the physical environment of birds. The first two pieces of the second part consider lakes, mentioning Superior by name.
Next “The Glider” revisits the question: what are birds thinking about? While it doesn’t attempt to answer the inscrutable, perhaps pride might be a possible avian attitude. After all, besides the rather clunky and altogether graceless metallic imitations of men, birds have the domain of the air all to themselves. Indeed, whilst things which live in water or on land have a notoriously bad time in other settings, birds not only fly with an ability which makes insects seem like sorry posours, but fowl also strut about on land with as much swagger as any self-respecting quadruped, and they can swim and dive as natural as when they’re flying. Armless though they are, birds are dexterous fellows.
As to this prideful awareness, we consider from “The Glider,”
Wing set
pinions splayed
a Red-tailed Hawk glides eastward on the breeze
just gliding, mind,
perhaps lost in thought
rejoicing in such mastery of the air.
In the set of poems under the heading “Loon Triptych” we consider the other-worldly aspect of birds, loons in this instance. After all, there is a strange character to a creature who can master air, land, and sea. In these pieces we consider that birds have, “A hint of the prehistoric in those thin beating wings”; their mental world is once again mentioned this time as “ghosting thoughts”; their eeriness is on display, since, “There is something of the ghost about the loon,”; they have “a maniac’s cry” and a “werewolf spirit.” Finally, we don’t think we’re seeing Poe’s ghost when our author concludes his “Loon Lamentation” with, “Soon, [the loon’s song], will nevermore be heard.” Nevermore, nevermore. Loons are just as spooky and forlorn as ravens, it seems.
The splay of Pope’s poetry also considers birds in their non-mealtime interactions. Just as Fluttering Things has asked us to consider the contemplation and, indeed, even the haughtiness of these capable flying-walking-swimming triathletes, “Red Rock Eden” introduces us to the all-too-human reality of annoyance. Perhaps the more humble, work-a-day birds are annoyed by the airs which their brighter, louder colleagues put on.
We read,
Like orange charred embers
Glowing live in the wind
Blackburnian Warblers flit through the trees
with immature Yellow-rumped Warblers
Drab little birds
until they flit away and their rumps flare and flash.
As we come to the end of the collection we fittingly have a meditation on death, and none better than the grizzled vulture to do this. After describing the juxtaposition of the death sentinel with his beauty in flight, Pope ponders,
How odd it is
to find such grace
in the body of death.
Finally “The Prothonotary Warbler” ends Fluttering Things on a note (and picture) of exuberance. No yawning emperor of Yeats’ mind accompanies this majestic flier as the author says,
I thrill with the Byzantine Court
as the light of the Emperor’s might starts to shine through the doors
and the Notary Chief
resplendent
in a gorgeous blue cape and bright yellow hood,
swoops through the fawning throng.
Richard Pope’s collection of birding poetry reminds us of the sounds, beauties, and personalities of those flying fellows who are ever around us. Always on missions of their own far more important than the silly human world, Fluttering Things—like its avian theme—bids us to do those things bird watching and poetry do best: slow down, observe, and remember. If we do so, as Pope’s book closes, and as we close, “Once more all is aright with the world.”
Featured: Tornseglare (Common Swifts), by Bruno Liljefors; painted in 1886.
