My favorite section of Ed Roberson's City Eclogue is "Ornithologies." Ornithology is the study of birds, so I was expecting plenty talk of birds, and that's just what I got. Calling the departures/arrivals board in the Trenton Station in New Jersey the "state bird" was powerful in the poem "Orinthology" (pages 94-5)
I'm sure it's been said many times before, but isn't it true that we move through nature by train or plane, without ever noticing it? The closest we come to birds is in a train station, staring up at the departures board, getting angry that you're being delayed.
Another example of "moving through nature" in "Ornithologies" is in "Open / Back Up (breadth of field)" (page 88) is when Roberson states that the last time he walked through a field, he was basically surrounded by police. An aside regarding this poem - I had to look up "auspice" (but I'm still not sure what it means) and found that it literally means "one who looks at birds" in Latin. Not so different from ornithology!
Moving on to some more birds...this time by Anne Lamott. I first borrowed Bird by Bird from the library in February - I kept renewing the book until I saw it on the required texts for this class and was relieved that I could finally just buy it! I love how Lamott describes writing as just being something a person does. It doesn't have to be terribly profound and it's going to suck the first few times around. And you keep going anyway, because it is what you do.
The idea of "taking it bird by bird" is hard for me, though. (And I know all too well the feeling of having had three months to write something and still writing it the night before it is due...please don't look at the timestamp on this post.) I like to tackle projects, head first, and beat them until I'm finished. This doesn't happen in chunks, shifts, and hardly ever drafts. No matter how many people or books say to never edit while you write, I'm going to edit while I write. (Just kidding, I'm trying really hard to stop editing while I write....) In some cases, it is nearly impossible to NOT go "bird by bird," like research papers. All you can do is take the quotes and fill in around them. Can't start at the top and go straight through to the end, because you can't know how it should begin if you don't know what you said in the middle. But other things, you need to start at the beginning and follow it out, without jumping around, to the end, because that is how that particular piece of writing will come together best.
good, well-said.
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