Thomson

Jeffrey Thomson’s book Birdwatching in Wartime is an intriguing glimpse into a rainforest atmosphere, which mixes in details about specific animals and plants that can be found in the landscape, such as “tambaqui”, “tapir”, “hornbills” and “bougainvillea.” This book is structured into five different parts, each poem thick and rich with vocabulary of Spanish words, incredible sceneries and animal encounters, all written from one perspective of the single narrator. The style of each poem varies; the first section is pretty much standard poetry, or what we could consider “normal”. The whole second section is a long, 18-page poem that varies in stanza structure and use of punctuation. The fourth section is almost the same, with it all being one poem, except this has a pattern of each page having three stanzas with three lines each, making the reading flow, as opposed to the choppiness and edge to the non-patterned poems of the three sections before this one. To fully understand the context of these poems, I had to be near a computer or have people explain it to me in class, because there are animals I’ve never even heard of before, and connections that I couldn’t quite tie in with my knowledge of the South American rainforest.

After reading, it became clear to me that Thomson was using language to look at the world. Though you couldn’t begin to classify this book as solely “clear” glass or “stained”. This collection has a very good mix of both. From the first poem, “Landscape with Swelling and Hives”, the sheer volume of words on the page makes the reading slower, and the poem more dense, just like Thomson implied in class: the rainforest is dense, so the poems should be, too. He also said in class that over four thousand (or was it forty thousand?) types of insects were found in a single tree. It’s no wonder there were an incredible amount of layers to each poem. The rainforest itself is composed of layers. I think this book was successful in its attempt to convey thickness and complexity of nature. It really made me dig for meaning, which I think is a great discovery for readers. Even with the poem, “Twin”, where it doesn’t necessarily take place in the jungle, there is a sense of being universal: “They exist together / …witched together by possibility’s spell.” (21). This idea of a split person is interesting, because there is a light and dark side to everyone, and that idea is one that is a prominent idea of Thomson’s. There are these parallels of good and bad with every situation, which is the main theme I got out of the book. Even in “Ars Poetica with Pain”, it rivals Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam with Greek Mythology. The cartoon, in general, is innocent, but the context of Yosemite Sam being hung is a sense of harsh reality. Thomson is great at that duality complex, such as when I mentioned before that this collection is both clear and stained glass.

My evaluation is simple: this book really didn’t have too much of an effect on me as a reader. I’ve never been to South America, nor did this book really make me even want to go there. Though, having Thomson in class sparked ideas of my own, specifically when he said the quote that “Only gods can say what something is. Writers can only say what it looks like.” He has the mind-set of Williams when he said that. I have to give him credit, he does have an interesting and unique style, but I probably wouldn’t have read the book if it weren’t assigned for class. Thomson’s poetry deals with too much of nature sometimes, and I would love to see the retrospective reflection on the aftermath of the trip, not always being there and experiencing it. Also, my interest in poetry wanes if it is too dense and Thomson’s poetry has a lot of words. I’m more of an Armantrout kind of person. Although, I do enjoy the duality he brings-- it shows that life is complex, and so poetry should be, too.