* RADIO RANT: Birds as Symbols

I only caught snippets of Michael Savage last night (8/29), but his discussion (or rather, rant, as usual) about the Senator Craig affair had somehow wandered to the bird calling in the background of the Senator's "I am not gay" press conference. Yes, it was a Red-winged Blackbird (its "cong-er-ee" call), as a caller or two told him; but Savage's immediate reaction was so typically Western, and by the way, so typically traditional-lit-crit: he asked, "What does the blackbird symbolize in literature?!" Yikes! The very subject, really, of my book-manuscript-at-the-press. I couldn't handle the ideational pain and fled to sports talk radio.

I suppose that at least one caller fed Savage the standard freshman-in-college answer—"the blackbird stands for death"—and that our good Doctor applied it "cleverly" to the Senator's doomed career. But again, how symptomatic of mainstream anthropocentric culture to see other species as "all about us," as if God had put other species here to remind humans of our own mortality. (Geez, was there ever a real, honest-to-goodness snake in the Garden of Eden?) There was a real, individual Red-winged Blackbird calling there, with as much "reason" and worth to do so as the human fellow frantically trying to save his political ass. A deconstructive reversal of foreground & background might be instructive here: "What's that stupid primate sputtering about while Mr. Blackbird sings his wonderful tune?"

Finally, the old "death" equation hardly works with the red-wing, anyway. The "black birds" traditionally demonized in Western folklore are the crow and raven, not even loosely related to the red-wing. Closer, ornithologically, are Wallace Steven's grackles, sometimes read by critics as symbols of death (though symbols of sheer mundanity, of "reality" itself, works better for me in the context of Stevens' corpus). In contrast, though—if I HAVE to talk "symbolism"—the red-wing has always suggested to me the jouissance of the new spring, a powerfully ebullient paean to (and epitome of) nature's general rejuvenation. But as a poem I wrote as a much younger fellow reminds me, even this is sheer homocentric projection:

        AFTER LORCA   (c. 1986; rev. 1992)

the red-winged blackbird
sings, but not to call his pied-brown mate
or a cattail congerie--
he sings to be singing: he sings

the red-winged blackbird
sings, but not for the ever-returning spring,
or other springs, gone by--
he sings to be singing: he sings

the red-winged blackbird
sings, not to recall in us some preter-
natural nature of things:
he sings

* Western Bird Notes—and a New Poem

My recent trip out "west" was a reminder of how a mere 500-mile difference in habitat changes the very birds. Well, sort of, since the old French saying, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" still rings true, as similar niches are taken over by different, but closely related, birds. Mountain Bluebirds rather than Eastern Bluebirds, for instance. The Bullock's replaces the Baltimore Oriole; the Spotted becomes surrogate for the Eastern Towhee; the Violet-Green Swallow zips over the lake instead of the Tree Swallow. In the place of (mostly) White-Breasted Nuthatches, I see/hear (more of) the Red-breasted species. No more Eastern Meadowlarks at all—only Western. Lazuli instead of Indigo Buntings. (One notable exception: Eastern Kingbirds are still more common than the Western variety, here in Western SoDak: they are the true "tyrant flycatchers" in that sibling rivalry!—as the many pecks to the head they've given me in one lifetime prove.)

Two other western/Black Hills species reminded me of something else (besides the fact that I used to write poems)—the ornithological names of birds are often themselves acts of Western imperialism:

    TWO BIRDS MEET LEWIS & CLARK (1805-1806)
                                                                --TCG, 6/23/07

            I: Lewis's Woodpecker  

They call me Lewis's Woodpecker.
I didn't choose that name, but after millennia of me
hammering at the dead wood of these pine hills . . .
they came: with maps, and a native woman, and a
whole mind's-load of old world naturalist terms & knowledge.

In fact, I guess my real name is Latin now, but I can't even
begin to pronounce it—so just call me "Lewie," after that
guy who kept looking around and writing things down, in a
fine script, as if he were capturing my feathered soul.
I heard that he killed himself, only a few years later.
Why he did is beyond my understanding, but then,
I am only a bird.

            II: Clark's Nutcracker  

Well, this Lewis fellow's sidekick was named Clark, and so
here I am, or how you know me. The only thing else you
need to know, apparently, is that I crack open
pine cones for a living.

But did you also know that my nickname is "camp robber"?
Yes, tourists, I'll steal your picnic table blind. But hey, that's
nothing, compared to what Lewis &
Clark started here, halfway on the
way to stealing a continent.