Wind Books, 2016<\/p>\n
by Tami Haaland<\/p>\n
In her well-known poem, \u201cCome into Animal Presence,\u201d Denise Levertov invites readers to feel the \u201cjoy\u201d and privilege of \u201canimal presence.\u201d I wonder if Diane Lockward had Levertov in mind as she developed The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement<\/em>, where both domesticated and wild animals play a significant role. According to Levertov, \u201cthe lonely white \/ rabbit on the roof is a star \/ twitching its ears at the rain (3-5), and again, \u201cthe rabbit inspects his strange surroundings \/ in white star-silence\u201d (17-18). At the heart of Lockward\u2019s book is a rabbit\u2014the one who receives \u201ccarrots of atonement\u201d (\u201cOriginal Sin\u201d 15); other rabbits appear later to highlight vulnerability or a reconnection with the natural world. Birds also play a primary role in this volume. \u00a0Animals are sometimes atmospheric, sometimes ominous, and in several instances become alternative selves for the speakers of these poems. The closing line of \u201cArty Ars Poetica\u201d aptly describes her work: \u201cI make beautiful the moments of terror\u201d (18), which often as not include animals.<\/p>\n The most obvious animal presence in Lockward\u2019s book comes in \u201cOriginal Sin,\u201d which also contains a line that provides the book with its title. The rabbit of this narrative has lost its tail as the speaker\u2019s best friend pulls it off.\u00a0 But the speaker takes responsibility for this cruel act, and Lockward explores the relationship between guilt and false confession which leads the child to feel that she was, in fact, the guilty party. Though she tries to atone for her assumed guilt by providing carrots to the maimed rabbit, this solution doesn\u2019t work and her guilt remains because 1) she lied, 2) she wishes she had thought to snip off the rabbit\u2019s tail for herself, and 3) the rabbit dies.\u00a0 The inner conflict of desire and guilt focused on her beloved pet offers an example of how the sources of violence become murky, with the victimized creature at the center of it all. Perhaps this marks the beginning of the \u201cterror\u201d Lockward mentions in her \u201cArs Poetica.\u201d<\/p>\n In this book, we see speakers who want to put bird feeders in trees (\u201cI Want to Save the Trees\u201d), who contemplate fallen birds and wonders why more don\u2019t drop from the skies (\u201cThinking Like a Buddhist\u201d), who cast off a lover \u201cthe way a cicada wiggles out of its husk\u201d (\u201cHow I Dumped You\u201d). We also see a speaker who beats a dog with a belt after the dog has attacked and killed her child\u2019s pet rabbit (\u201cEminent Domain\u201d) and another who sees the beauty in how her cat kills a rat, then brings it home (\u201cThe Gift of a Rat\u201d).<\/p>\n I appreciate the range of Lockward\u2019s work as she explores human-animal connections from observation to intimacy. In the poems that fascinate me most, animals are not on the exterior of the life as something owned or observed, but they loom larger, become mythic and more interior.<\/p>\n \u201cIn My Bones\u201d stands out as an example: \u201cThrough \/ my nose, \/ downstream \/ into my throat, \/ a salmon swims \/ in my bones\u201d (1-6). \u00a0The speaker\u2019s body becomes \u201cthe damaged \/ ecosystem\u201d (8-9) where the female salmon \u201clays her eggs\u201d (14). In this way, the ecosystem takes on a womb and tomb identity and the eggs seem to foreshadow a recovery.\u00a0 The salmon\u2019s \u201cundulations\u201d (18) affect the human ecosystem, and the ecosystem moves in response to the salmon. As the poem continues, the speaker perceives herself to be \u201cpink with \/ oily ooze of \/ salmon\u201d (31-33) a sort of healing balm. \u201cWild with \/ desire for fresh water, I swim upstream \/ against the current, \/ through rapids \/ and estuaries\u201d (34-36). The presence of the salmon gives strength and direction to whatever recovery is implied by this poem, which presents a dreamy and mysterious union of body as landscape and migratory creature as spirit inhabitant.<\/p>\n Birds figure large in this book as well. In \u201cThe Third Egg,\u201d wild turkeys appear as both threat and talisman. The speaker says \u201cI sat still and watched, repulsed \/ by the fleshy caruncles across each head, \/\/ the jiggly red wattles and dangling rope-like \/ flaps of skin on the throat, \/ and from the center of the breast, a tuft \/\/ of small feathers that had failed to grow\u201d (5-10). The turkeys have invaded her yard and she is pregnant. She takes the \u201ctuft of small feathers that had failed to grow\u201d as an implied threat. These large birds are the \u201cdark shadows\u201d (16) moving into and through her habitat, poking \u201cdead leaves\u201d (18). \u201cThe biggest gobbler looked at me, \/ . . . \/ He was not afraid, but I clutched my belly, \/ beating with child, \/ this time my last hope\u201d (20, 22-23). The threat amplifies through the poem. Eye contact with a bird draws the speaker\u2019s attention immediately to her unborn child, accentuating its vulnerability. She prays that these creatures represent \u201cno omens or portents\u201d (25).Then she does something unexpected in the last two lines. She searches for a feather to use as an \u201camulet\u201d for this \u201cseed blooming inside me\u201d (27).\u00a0 Once again, she crosses into mythic space. Animals are not to be taken lightly because they may be something more than what they seem, and in this context the feather becomes a protection. There is power in this animal and what it leaves.<\/p>\n Feathers left behind by birds continue as a motif, appearing in a number of other poems, but nowhere more centrally than in \u201cWhere Feathers Go When They Fall.\u201d In this poem the speaker is transformed after dreaming of birds all night. \u201cTickled awake, \/ my mouth fills with feathers\u201d (2-3). Soon, she is at the window, drawn by the blue of the sky, her arms become wings and she is in flight.\u00a0 She develops \u201ca strange \/ new appetite for worms\u201d (15-16) and she builds a nest outside of her former, human home, relishing this newfound freedom. The birds whose feathers fill her are \u201cblue jay, warbler, starling\u201d (4) and now she has \u201cmulti-colored plumage\u201d (37), though not one red feather from a cardinal. This poet as shape shifter seems especially content that the children are grown and out of the nest, that life has become more simple, that pecking for worms, eating all day long, and navigating the flowers defines her new, transformed existence.<\/p>\n The conclusion of this book introduces us again to a rabbit, a creature that was featured so prominently on the cover of the book, in \u201cOriginal Sin\u201d and in \u201cEminent Domain.\u201d In \u201cSigns,\u201d Lockward creates a list matched to recovery from an undefined condition. She says: \u201cTo believe . . . that a soft \/\/ rabbit still lives inside you and after its long sleep \/ rubs its pink eyes, rises, and brings you back \/ to the park\u201d (6-9). This is one among many \u201csigns,\u201d and it is clear the speaker is reconnecting with the natural environment after a long separation. Here, the rabbit inhabits the speaker much like the salmon did in \u201cIn My Bones.\u201d<\/p>\n In these and other examples, Diane Lockward skillfully infuses her poems with animal presence, creating a kinship that demonstrates tension\u2014and sometimes violence\u2014alongside beauty and mystery as human and animal natures intertwine.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wind Books, 2016 by Tami Haaland In her well-known poem, \u201cCome into Animal Presence,\u201d Denise Levertov invites readers to feel the \u201cjoy\u201d and privilege of \u201canimal presence.\u201d I wonder if Diane Lockward had Levertov in mind as she developed The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement, where both domesticated and wild animals play a significant role. According […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":857,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[170,169,171,167,168],"class_list":["post-856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basaltblog","category-featured-articles","tag-come-into-animal-presence","tag-denise-levertov","tag-diane-lockward","tag-tami-haaland","tag-the-uneaten-carrots-of-atonement"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":861,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions\/861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}