Jeffrey Thomson’s Birdwatching in Wartime contains such rich detail of the South American flora and fauna that after reading, one can close their eyes and truly visualize the landscape. He started to write many of these poems while traveling in Costa Rica and Brazil, and his knowledge of the ecology of the region truly shines through in the poetry. Most of his poetry is written in a traditional form, with verses made up of uniform numbers of lines. One notable exception to this is “Landscape with Footnotes,” in which Thomson writes a poem consisting entirely of footnotes. Most every one of the footnotes is a reference to something in another poem, like the Amazonian bees that he gets stung by in “Landscape with Swelling and Hives.” The rest of the book is the landscape Thomson talks about in this poem, and he has managed to tie one single poem to every other one in the collection.
The many layers of meaning Thomson has written may seem daunting to some readers, who may not wish to run to Google or Wikipedia whenever they encounter a new term (which happens quite often), but those layers are necessary. The poems aren’t dense just for their own sake; they need to be dense in order to show the density of the rainforest. In the rainforest, you have the canopy, which includes hundreds upon hundreds of animal species who never reach the ground, the tall trees themselves which provide shelter for more species, and the plants and animals that inhibit the ground. These layers of flora conceal so much that it is estimated that there are millions of undiscovered animal species. Just like there are many undiscovered animals living in the rainforest, there are many undiscovered meanings in Thomson’s poetry, hidden by the layers. The poet said it himself: “behind each story there’s another story.” Take, for instance, his poem “Underwhelmed.” Upon first glance it seems like it’s a poem about just a man and a woman, sitting underneath a night sky. When you look at it closer, however, you might find a line that you missed reading through it the first time: “the miscarried child left in the bowl.” The poem takes on an entirely different meaning once this layer is uncovered.
Thomson was very successful with writing pieces that are at one time “clear-glass” poetry, which looks out to the larger world, and “stained-glass” poetry, which looks back onto language. The many layers may frustrate some, as well as the occasional necessity to look something up, but once the reader looks past that, they can truly see a clear portrait of the South American landscape that Thomson wanted to share.
Brittany I really enjoy your blog and think that your analysis is particularly interesting. I love that you break down the physical layers of the rain forest and relate them to the complex layers that Thomson creates in his poetry. I think it is important to think about the fact that he didn't necessarily want the readers to sit with Google and pick apart each detail or reference in his poem because the overwhelming effect of having these terms thrown on the page relates to, perhaps, one stepping into a rainforest for the first time and being overcome by beauty and density. I agree that each layer in his poetry conceals yet another story and layer and that this image relates beautifully to that of the rainforest. Each component or species in the specific layers of the rainforest could not live or flourish without the other. And if they existed individually it would not have such a powerful effect on the traveler or observer.
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