Birdwatching in Wartime is filled with the rich, vivid details of the South American landscape and jungle. Animals reside next to human history and they are all captured by the curious and particular eye of the poet. Upon first glance the poems feel straightforward enough but upon closer inspection unfold into multiple meanings and detailed narratives with profound introspection as rich as the landscape they describe.
Thomson is an adept at layering. Beginning with the Latin names of animals and descending into stark vernaculars, he is able to paint pictures of the Amazonian landscape that both invite and challenge the reader. In “Landscape with Footnotes” we are given a poem that doesn’t exist and only presented with the footnotes to this invisible poem. The poem instead unfolds within the facts written in the footers and in the relationship to other poems. “4. Dios te de! The Spanish for the toucan’s call translates, ‘God keep you!’” reappears from mention in an earlier poem, both tying the two together and giving each more meaning. Thomson is a master of including traditional forms and motifs with his inventive ones. In “Ars Poetica with Pain,” Eurydice is next to Bugs Bunny in a seemingly simple poem composed of violent couplets. In the end Thomson has contemplated death, existence, multiplicity, poetry, madness and aging.
A good portion of the success or failure of this book depends upon the reader’s willingness to have google at his or her fingertips. While each poem is easily accessible on certain levels without delving into the background knowledge of species and place, it is in the intertextual references and scientific specificity that the heart of each poem lies. In this way, Thomson succeeds in educating us in his style of poetry and constructing meaning dependent upon our understandings of language operating on the world.
I totally agree with your take on Thomson's work. I think he is really successful at what he does, with the layering of allusions, taking the reader further and further into his mind and what he has experienced. As you say, by the end of the collection, he has covered a vast range of topics through his intellectual poetry, "death, existence, multiplicity, poetry, madness and aging." I think it is obvious that he wanted to achieve several things through this book, more than the recording of his experiences in Costa Rica and Peru. He grapples with a number of human emotions and allows us into this process, being quite honest at times about things we perhaps did not want to know. But nevertheless in a way it is that honesty that attracts the reader. At least for me, at times when I had no clue what he was talking about, I appreciated the moments that arose the were purely human, relatable, simple even.
ReplyDeleteI also think you're exactly right when you say that, "A good portion of the success or failure of this book depends upon the reader’s willingness to have google at his or her fingertips." Personally, I don't really enjoy this kind of poetry. I prefer to experience poems all on their own, without having to be sitting in front of a computer to understand them. To me, that ruins the basic enjoyment of poetry at its purest form. However, Thomson clearly achieves a great deal here, and once that commitment is made, to explore every detail of his poems, it is well worth it. I can't say I would ever choose to do that on my own, but I definitely got a lot out of the experience. As you say, he, "succeeds in educating us in his style of poetry and constructing meaning dependent upon our understandings of language operating on the world."
I agree with your statement that Thomson’s work seems to be pretty much straightforward but when you really read closely, the poem turns out to have multiple meanings. I think that maybe he wrote this way to give readers different perspectives and to show that there is more than one perspective. That is one of the most interesting things about Thomson’s work. I also like that you pointed out his style of layering allusions because it is quite a challenge to read through all of them and still keep your grasp on the poem as a whole. A reader can easily get lost in the various allusions and lose track of what they are reading and start to focus on the individual allusion’s meanings.
ReplyDeleteI also agree when you say that a reader can only truly get anything out of the book if they are willing to look deeper into these allusions. Without researching them, the reader doesn’t get the full effect of the book. Although it takes a lot of work, looking further into these allusions pays off in the end. Thomson educates his readers with these allusions and without researching them, a reader completely misses the point of the book.