What are these poems saying about our relationship to animals? Draw connections to Columbus, Hanh, Alexander, and/or Endo.
Also: don't forget that you should have a thesis and a rough outline of ideas for your essay by Friday! Please bring hard copies of your outlines and thesis statements to class.
How are Gibson’s and Wagoner’s ideas related?
ReplyDeleteWhich author has a more direct version of death through nature?
“Look into my eyes I tell them. See for yourself the one shining field. Look into my eyes before you shoot” Gibson ends her poem “One Body” with these chilling lines (Gibson 473). It is as if this voice is the many voices of the nature around her. This voice is speaking out against the problems that are facing the nature and animals around her. “A click, the cocking sound, a swish as the men steal in to take what they want they are clever, they are hungry” these men have no idea that with each step they are ruining something that is precious (472). This voice is just trying to show them what they would be ruining. “I am a storm of voices, snipe and wolf snow goose, dolphin, quail, and lark” this was the voice of every animal, yet the men heard none of it (473). They were in a one-track mind that was to kill for food and pleasure. They had no need to worry about what it would do to the world around them. These men are just like the hunter in David Wagoner’s “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct.” He goes and shoots a bird, yet cares nothing about it when it is wailing in his jacket on the walk home, “the wing-shot bird that he’d hidden inside his coat began to cry like a baby” (Wagoner 392). This bird was a treasure to him because he had been able to shoot it, yet he did not care about the health of the bird. This bird was just a possession, just like the men that went hunting in Gibson’s poem. None of these men thought about the animals as anymore than a possession or food. “From which a white edge flowed to the lame wing like light flying and ended there in blackness,” for these animals these men were just like their last ray of light (392). As soon as they were captured or killed by these men they would no longer have the life that they knew. These men were taking away from nature but were also selfishly taking away from what should not have been theirs. The bird was a lot like the bird that Numada had, even though his was a more positive reason to buy the bird, he still had a personal, prideful to have the bird. Numada felt that the bird was his opportunity to look back on the fact that another bird had taken his place. But for these men, the bird was just the possession. There was no need for them to have it other than to have the pride. They were not going to take care of it or really care about it.
Word Count: 460
#17 Wagoner and Gibson
ReplyDeleteAre these poems about man taking over nature for his own selfish purposes?
Does nature represent God or religion?
Both of these poems represent the destructive nature of man towards nature for his own selfish purposes. In “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct,” the speaker brings a bird from the wild into his home to “make them live forever inside books” (Mercer Reader 392). The bird “[cries] like a baby” and the speaker comes home to find the bird “clinging beside a hole in the wall clear through to the already-splintered weatherboards and the sky beyond” (392). This bird cries because it has been forced into captivity against its will and it strives to be free back in nature. The speaker ignores all this and while the bird “went on wailing as if toward cypress groves while the artist drew and tinted on fine vellum its red cockade, grey claws, and sepia eyes” (392). The bird, being forced into captivity, refuses “pecans and beetles, chestnuts and sweet-sour fruit of magnolias” (392). It is slowly committing suicide because it longs for its freedom. Even when the bird is dying the man doesn’t realize what is happening and he “watched it die, with great regret” (392). In “One Body,” man continues “coming in and in toward the center of the field where I crouch down with the rabbits, with the quail driven into this space by the clackety mower” (472). This shows the destructive nature of man toward nature driving it out of their habitat. The speaker sees man as “clever, they are hungry” (472). Man hunts them and they don’t understand why. This poem also embodies a religious idea when the speaker “[rises] in a tall gust of rage and compassion” and says, “they are my brothers—they are my brothers and I love them, too” (473). This implies a Christ-like image of someone rising from the “debris of the world” and saying that he loves all things and that even the animals are his brothers and therefore shouldn’t be killed.
Word Count: 328
What do the two poems have in common when comparing the stories?
ReplyDeleteWhat is the narrator in the second poem?
Comparing the two poems, they are both similar in the sense that they involve both man and some piece of nature. For example, “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct” tells about how a man captures a bird, whose wing he has shot, takes it to his study, draws it, and then watches it die. “One Body” is about how the narrator is enjoying the field it is in (I say “it” because I am unsure what the narrator is) until men come and begin to hunt, and the narrator tells them to not shoot. Both poems have men in them, coming to destroy nature, although I do not believe that the death of the bird in the first poem was quite what the man wanted. Both poems also talk about how an animal dies, which is somewhat depressing to me.
In the second poem, the narrator speaks to the hunters. “Look into my eyes I tell them. See for yourself the one shining field Look into my eyes before you shoot” (473). I am guessing that the narrator could possibly be the spirit of that field. The way the narrator describes itself, however, it seems to have a lot of elements that make it up; it is almost as if it is nature as a whole that is trying to speak to the hunters (473). The narrator is trying to protect the lives of the animals that live there, but it also cannot be angry at the men, because it cares about them, as well. The spirit, if one wishes to call it a spirit, seems to be slightly torn between the two groups: the men and the plants and animals. However, it seems to take the side of the animals a little more.
Taylor Garrett
ReplyDeleteDaily 3-4-11
Does human nature and greed tear the world apart?
What the heck is the narrator?
According to the Buddhist concept of the Jewel Net of Indra, all parts of the earth are connected and one action affects everyone and everything else. All the parts of the field work in mutual advancement and hold the world in equilibrium without chaos. Starting with Adam human and nature were one. Man came from the dust and man returns to the dust. Man was caretaker of the earth not dictator. His actions were meant to take care of the planet that God had created and to keep it good like it was in God’s eyes. Somewhere along the line, after man’s dismissal from the Garden of Eden, man lost sense of his duty to the earth and was focused solely on his own advancement and became unconcerned about maintaining the peace, order, unity, and beauty that God had intended for this earth. Man now tears down massive amounts of forest to build their homes and factories and they hunt animals to their extinction just because of the awe and money they can gain from friends and customers. They carry no knowledge of what effect their actions hold on the world as a whole. If a person believes in the Buddhist traditions, then they would understand the idea that every living thing has a spirit, and that they suffer just like humans do. And with the concept of the Jewel Net of Indra, when the plants and animals have harm caused to them, in some way it will cause harm to the humans as well. The poem by Margaret Gibson does a good job exemplifying this in her poem. As mean aspire for wealth and prosperity out of their greed, those other parts of nature without a voice are left to suffer because they have no one to speak up for them.
Word Count 315
Both “One Body” and “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct” examine the “creature” portion of the human soul where greed and a sense of narrow minded focus blind humanity from the peace in the rest of the world. In “One Body,” the narrator speaks from Nature’s point of view to point out how all of creation is connected similar to the thread-like connections of an interbeing philosophy, but the greed and evil humanity poses on the rest of the world causes suffering and pain: “Stop this. Stop it now/ I say to the men, who stalk closer/ keen on the kill, late light/ on the steel of their rifles/ and they are my brothers- they are my brothers/ and I love them, too” (Gibson 473). Humans and other life on Earth are like brothers in the sense that we are all connected in the same force illustrated in Shusaku Endo’s Deep River. Humanity and Nature are in the same river of life and humanity that builds upon itself by coming together, not creating tensions between one another. When humans dissect and examine Nature and each other for something they believe to be majestic and for their own purpose, they are blinded by their own desires for discovery that they do not realize the connection between the two. David Wagoner illustrates this idea in “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct” and shows how when humans focus on the discovery and separation caused by their greed, both humanity and Nature suffer more pain: “He drew and studied for days, eating and dreaming/ Fitfully through the dancing and loud drumming/ Of an ivory bill that refused pecans and beetles,/ Chestnuts and sweet sour fruits from magnolias,/ Riddling his table, slashing his fingers, wailing. He watched it die, he said, with great regret” (Wagoner 392). Humanity must realize their greed to be able to see the suffering it has caused for themselves and the rest of creation. word count: 332
ReplyDelete1. Does humanity always become enveloped in its own greed or can there be a change for selflessness?
2. How does society promote ideas of greed and consumptionism and not realize the effects on others if we are all connected in the same force or being?
Who, in the novel Deep River, would fin these poems moving?
ReplyDeleteWhat is the link between connectedness and beauty?
In the poems “One Body” by Margaret Gibson and “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct” by David Wagoner, the authors both try to express a feeling of connectivity to nature. This is similar to the way Numada reacted to the animals, which he connected to in the novel Deep River. All three characters feel a deep connection to the natural world and its simplicity. In the poem “One Body” the speaker believes that they are truly connected to the natural world and find the creatures in nature to be family. The Earth is their “only homeplace” which they share with all other animals (Gibson 472). Numada felt the deep connection to the animals in his life, viewing them as almost a confidant. The myna bird went as far as, in his mind, saving his life. When he was finally able to repay his bird for sacrificing his life for him, he felt the “life [that] flowed back and forth between the trees and the chirping of the birds and the wind” (Endo 204). When Numada became linked to the natural world he was able to experience the deep connection that it forged within his very soul. In the poem about sketching the bird, the speaker tried to contain the natural world for his own selfish purposes. When “he tied one of its legs to a table leg, it started wailing” because it was being confined (Wagoner 392). . The speaker was not able to see the real beauty of the bird because he took it out of the deep and beautiful connectedness that epitomized the bird. The bird no longer exists and the speaker was not able to realize the special thing that he once possessed. When the people connect themselves to the natural world they are able to see beauty that was previously unseen to them.
Word Count: 311
How do the two poems relate?
ReplyDeleteWhat do they say about the relationship between man and nature?
I can’t help but feel that both of these authors have a somewhat anti-hunting message. They seem to prefer a more naturalistic approach to animals. In all of the stanzas except for the last, Wagoner comments on the “wailing” and “cry[ing] like a baby” of the ivory-billed woodpecker (MR 392). It reminds me of Walker Percy and “The Loss of the Creature”, when he says the animal is “rendered invisible by a shift of reality from concrete thing to theory…called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” (25). He says that now, “the ‘specimen’ is seen as less real than the theory of the specimen,” and it “ceases to be an individual” (25). I think this is evident in that “he watched it die” just so that he could “dr[a]w and stud[y] it for days, eating and dreaming/fitfully” (392). The person in the poem shot the bird, giving it “the lame wing”, and taking it captive so he would “gather [his] flock around [him] with a rifle/and make [the animals] live forever inside books” (392). He puts the woodpecker in the books to live forever, making the theory of the bird more real than the actual bird, which is lets die so that he can study and draw it.
Gibson takes a similar stance on nature, but from the perspective of the hunted animal it appears rather than an outside third party. She crouches in the field and watch the activities of humans, mainly the cutting of the field and the hunting. She wants to see the humans and see “how the lens of the eye/magnifies to an emptiness/so deep” (472). She dares the “men, who stalk closer/keen on the kill” to “look into my eyes before you shoot” (473). It seems she wants to show the humans how lifeless or heartless they are compared to herself and all her “brothers” in the field with her (473). It is almost as if she is “the spirit” of all the living animals in the field, as she says she “rises up…in a net of pollen and stars,” suggesting some type of insect, her “thighs are twin towers of lightening,” perhaps a fast animal, and her “voice is a storm of voices, snipe and wolf/snow goose, dolphin, quail, and lark” (473). Both authors seem to have a connection with nature and protecting animals and not using them as specimen or game.
Word Count: 397
One of the core themes found within both of the readings is that we truly do not realize how our actions impact the rest of the world. Both of the readings use animals to serve as an example of this; we are so caught up in our lives and “our” world that we fail to see the repercussions of our actions. For example, in Wagoner’s story, the man shoots a woodpecker, but doesn’t quite kill it (Mercer Reader 392). He then cares for the bird, but upon learning of its escape attempt, ties the bird it up and studies it (392). Later on, the bird dies, even though all it wanted was to be set free (392). Sometimes, our so called “good intentions” do more harm than good. Even though the man cared for the bird, he was essentially the cause of its death (392). The relationship between man and animals is based around the idea of respect for one another; we respect the fact animals belong in the wild, and then we can learn as much as we want from them. This idea somewhat correlates with the idea of Hanh; that everything is interconnected and everything affects everything in some way, shape, or form (363). Gibson’s story is also an example of how our actions can have severe consequences. Hunting is something that doesn’t seem like it has major consequences, but if one looks at it from the perspective of the animal being hunted, than it seems like something completely different (472). We don’t realize the consequences of our actions; we can take the life of an animal with little or no thought, but we fail to see the repercussions to such an act (472). Almost all aspects of life depend on one another; when man upsets the balance between nature and our modern way of life, we essentially create a rift in the balance that holds our world together. (Word Count 321).
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhat does the bird in this poem represent?
ReplyDeleteIn both poems there is a sense of injustice, must one become self-realized before attempting to fight it?
Upon reading the poem by David Wagoner, the first thing I noticed was the title which claimed the ivory woodpecker extinct. Although, these birds are not entirely extinct according to some research I did online. So this word extinct probably means a specific bird or a bird which was its own one of a kind is dead. What then is so special about the death of this one bird? Perhaps its feeble attempts for freedom, which by methods of “[crying] like a baby” and “clinging beside a hole in the wall” (Mercer Reader 392), were pretty much foiled by its captor, the human being. A fact to note is that, the bird had been shot in the wing and had received no treatment, hence its death, so the man who shot it was responsible for its death. In a sense, the man figure can be represented as justice with a gun. So perhaps the message being said is that justice sometimes cannot be involved in a person’s situation, so it has to sit and “watch” (392). In the poem One Body, someone speaks of how his/her home or the “field” where he/she was “born” (Mercer Reader 472) is being destructed by outsiders and in this case mowers . Terror is all around so he/she tries to find within herself an inner peace with which to calm his/her “rage and compassion” (473). In relation to Nhat Hanh, this person tries to find this inner peace and self realization by letting his/her “mind” and “body” become “still” (472) in an attempt to stop the chaos which may lead to his/her demise. After this person has attained this self- realization (courage) he/she then says, “Stop this. Stop it now” (473) in attempt to fight the injustice he/she faces.
Word Count 324
Another interesting set of poems eliciting many emotions from the reader as well as the author. David Wagoner’s “The Auther of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct” is a very curious poem. From the second stanza of the poem we can tell this man loves birds. When the innkeeper and goodmen asked if his child was sick, Wagoner says he “slapped knees, and laughed as he unswaddled his prize, His pride and burdon” (Wagoner 392). This man must truly love and treasure animals to take it within his arms, but something does not seem right. If he truly loves the birds, why does he keep it captive when it cries to get away? After leaving the bird alone is him room, he comes back to find “his bedspread covered with plaster and the bird clinging beside a hole in the wall” (392). The bird has clearly attempted to force a way out of the confined room. It is begging to be set free, yet the man ties it down to keep it still. This reminds me most of the poem of the “Venus Hottentot”. This birdwatcher appears to be a mirror of Cuvier. It is not that he does not treasure the bird; in fact, he treasures it so much he took the time to keep it alive, but he does not treat it as a living creature. He sees the beauty of the bird as an object to study. The same way Cuvier saw the Venus Hottentot as a magnificent object to observe with his microscope. Walker Percy warns us of this in “The Loss of the Creature”. He states, “The dogfish, the tree, the seashell, the American Negro, the dream, are rendered invisible by a shift of reality form concrete thing to theory which Whitehead has called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” (Percy 25). By looking at the bird as just a mere specimen, he has devalued it. This devaluation of the bird causes him to treat it inhumanely just for the sake of science and personal discovery. At the end of the poem, the author states, “He watched it die, he said, with great regret” (Wagoner 392). This leads to an interesting question. Did the man truly feel guilty for what he had done to the bird, or was he regretful that he could not study the bird any more due to its passing?
ReplyDeleteWord Count: 398
Human beings are often taking things for granted. We treat things without really acknowledging the fact that they also have a life just like us. They have families, loved ones, and friends. In “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct,” the man describes his journey that when he “walked through town, the wing-shot bird he’d hidden inside his coat began to cry” and as he was doing so, “the innkeeper and the goodmen in the tavern” began to “ask him whether his child was sick, then laughed” (Wagoner 392). The laughter done by the innkeeper and the goodmen is something they did to mock the bird. Just because the noise brings discomfort to their ears, it doesn’t mean the bird is suffering physically, mentally, and emotionally. The bird is being treated as a prisoner because the man eventually “tied one of its legs to a table leg” until it started wailing again (Wagoner 392). Similarly, in “One Body” by Margaret Gibson, the author describes the anxiety that the animals have whenever they see a human being. As the character describes it, “I am born in a field of cornflowers and ripe wheat” where men take what they want because “they are clever, they are hungry” while the animals wait anxiously until they leave. Although men never once thought about the reality of what they are doing is wrong, men seems to always go in and take what they can. If we were to look at this like the food chain, mankind is definitely at the top of the chain because of our tools and weapons that we’ve created. The character in “One Body” is trying to say that when human starts shooting animals around for fun or for eating purposes; they don’t put themselves in the animals’ shoes. At the end, the character states, “Look into my eyes before you shoot” indicates that humans should try to feel the fear that the animals have before they shoot the animals.
ReplyDeleteOverall, mankind are a selfish specimen that seems to put the terms “survival of the fittest” to extreme uses.
(Word count: 352).
How are the two poems similar or related?
ReplyDeleteHow do these poems relate to humans?
In the poems “One Body” by Margaret Gibson and “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct” by David Wagoner the authors express an underlying connection to nature. Both poems portray human beings as co-habitants with animals, living and working in the same fields and forests as nature itself. However, the human seem to have little to no respect for nature. In “One Body” the narrator talks about how the men “steal in to take what they want” (472), implying a lack of respect. It seems that the humans fail to acknowledge the fact that nature is alive and a living, breathing, thriving entity. They simply view it as a source. Humans “take what they want” from nature with no regard for how it is affected. In spite of this disrespect and disregard, the narrator still says “they are my brothers and I love them, too” (473). As the title of this poem suggest, as well as the poem itself, we are one body, and only one. Everything is connected to everything, an ideal shared by Thich Nhat Hanh. Hahn believed in interrelatedness and infinite connectivity. In accordance with his idea and that of Gibson, we are all responsible for the welfare of each other, plants and animals included.
In “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct” a man shoots a bird and takes it back to his house to study it. However, he didn’t take care of the bird while he held it captive, but rather “watched it die” (392). Although he felt “great regret” (392), he still did not try to save the bird, thus he is still responsible for its death, regardless of the degree of his remorse. However, regret and remorse are different. Regret usually is synonymous with remorse, but in my opinion, does not imply remorse. To me the fact that he regrets simply means he wishes he hadn’t done what he did, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he was sorry for doing it. Either way, the man clearly lacked respect for the bird and its life.
[362]
To ask if science and nature seems to be a redundant question at best. Science is a product of the natural world. So the question really lies in are science and nature things that may only be appreciated exclusively? Much like we saw with Mr. Cuvier in ”The Venus Hottentot” by Elizabeth Alexander, the narrator in “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct” by David Wagoner sees the science behind nature as his love. Like Cuvier, the narrator has no moral qualms with surrendering a living, or once living, creature to his art. He is not bothered by the “high and plaintive and loud” (Wagoner 392) cries of the bird he has wounded for an experiment. He tethers the bird to his desk, as though making it his prisoner, and did not care when “it started wailing again” (392). Days into the process, the bird is desperate for escape, but the author still does not feel empathy for the living creature. As the bird is “riddling his table, slashing his finger, [and] wailing” (392) there is a direct parallel between the devotion to science the author makes and the bird’s equal passion to be restored to nature. The bird dies he remarks “with great regret” (392) and one must wonder if his regret is aimed toward the acts he has committed that robbed the bird of its life or if it the sadness he feels that his study has concluded. The irony in the overall narrative can be found in many places, but one of particular interest to me is the difference between his goals and his reality. In drawing the bird, the author hopes to “make them live forever inside books” (392). His goal is to be the cause to something immortal, an image that will last for eternity. It’s important that Wagoner uses the word “lives” here because it reflects the irony that the way the author strives to achieve this cause the bird to die. In reality, the author is striving for the preservation of an image, not of the creature itself.
ReplyDelete{348}
Does the author lose a sense of the creature for its value the way Walker Percy describes in “The Loss of the Creature”?
Does “One Body” by Margaret Gibson depict the ideal state of human nature with relation to the earth or the earth to humans?
How is the relationship between humans and animals defined in these two poems?
ReplyDeleteThe poems “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct”, by David Wagoner, and “One Body”, by Margaret Gibson, each provide a picture of the relationship that exists between humans and birds. The descriptions given by each of the authors reveal how humans are interrelated with animals, and how they coexist with one another. In his work, Wagoner reveals the care that a man has for a woodpecker that he has shot in the wing, and how he goes to great lengths to try to save it. Wagoner compares the bird to a screaming child, which is evident when he states, “When he walked through town, the wing-shot bird inside his coat began to cry like a baby” (Wagoner 392). This quote reveals how the injured bird is almost like his own child, and how a relationship exists between him and the bird. Wagoner later describes the deep regret the man has when the bird’s life finally does come to an end. Wagoner writes, “He watched it die, he said, with great regret” (Wagoner 392). This quote reveals how the man was truly remorseful for his shooting of the bird, and how he wanted desperately to save it. In her work, Gibson describes the relationship that she has with animals, and how she and animals are connected as one. She describes how she sits in a field and tries to persuade the stalking hunters around her not to kill the animals of the field. Gibson states, “Look into my eyes I tell them. See for yourself the one shining field Look into my eyes before you shoot” (Gibson 473). This quote reveals the care and compassion that she has for the animals around her, as well as her emphasis on the oneness of animals and humans. This idea of the oneness between and humans and nature is also conveyed throughout “Deep River”, and reveals the Hindu idea of how humans should treat animals with respect and compassion.
Word Count: 329
David Wagoner character has a similar view to Elizabeth Alexander's Cuvier in his excerpt of "The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct." He is blunt, straightforward, and selfish in his actions, gaining pride in his efforts to acquire specimens so that he will "make them live forever inside books" (Mercer Reader 392). The bird, as one might guess, is not as willing to continue its life inside a book, for it has a "high and plaintive and loud" call, defecating in the room while it was "clinging beside a hole in the wall" (392). The author has complete physical dominance over the creature, clearly depicted with the bird's lame wing and leg secured to a "table leg" (392). Yet, much like Alexander's Hottentot, the bird still has the power over its own life, and uses this power to refuse sustenance, to destroy the table, to maim the author's fingers, and to wail unceasingly (392). The author's reaction to the bird's death is a peculiar thing, for the story ends with "he watched it die, he said, with great regret" (392). One can interpret this as though the author was the equivalent of Alexander's Dr. Cuvier, where he regrets that the animal was no longer there to intrigue and interest him. An optimist might claim that the creature's death, after he had lived with it a few days, could result in his change of view regarding the bird being a specimen, but the story lacks the opportunity for the author to express this change, such as he burying and mourning the creature or aiding the creature to recovery. However, it is stated that he had "[dreamt] fitfully though the dancing and loud drumming of an ivory bill that refused pecans and beetles" (392). There is some humane part of the author that is being squelched by the reasoning portion of his mind.
ReplyDelete{314}
How can one incorporate both the reasoning portion of the soul with the emotional portion?
Regarding Hobbes' opinion toward justice, who is to rule over those who are on top, in this case the well respected author?