Nature in Rookery

In the book of poems, Rookery, Traci Brimhall infuses her language with diverse images of nature to tell a story about unfaithfulness, religion and war. However, instead of just telling, she is showing us images and painting a mental picture. Brimhall describes a lover who has been unfaithful: “You crawl into bed, apologies and insect wings | in your hair. I forgive the way you touched her knees, | your amber memory of her body” (Brimhall, 6). In this passage, Brimhall shifts back and forth from concrete narration to abstract imagery of nature. Each image is complementing the narration. For example, the narrator forgives her partner for being unfaithful, yet there will permanently be an amber mold of the girl’s body in his mind.

Images of nature are powerful because nature is universally recognizable. Furthermore, nature can mean more to different people because it is packed with symbolism of different places, cultures and time and therefore socio-historically rooted. Brimhall utilizes diverse images of nature to inventively put readers in different cultures. For example, Brimhall name-drops “beau soleil oysters” from Canada on page 6 and on page 8 she mentions a “raccoon troubling | the garbage cans,” a common occurrence in woody North America. Then she takes readers to an entirely different setting on page 45 when she mentions “the boy | who brings her guavas” and “two panthers.” These exotic images of nature take us to distant cultures in Africa.

Brimhall further utilizes nature imagery to set a mood. On page 8 she says, “The summer we met, bull sharks cruised the coastal shelf | at dusk.” Here, the imagery of sharks cruising along the coast sets a tone of impending danger. The next line, “Thunderstorms startled each afternoon, | bright and unforgiving.” Here she uses thunderstorms to emit the sense of strong, burning passion inciting at the start of their relationship. Immediately following this passage, Brimhall changes the mood by giving very different descriptions of nature: “How did it come to this? The raccoon troubling | the garbage cans. A blooming apple tree sheltering | a nest of dead birds. The train wailing in the distance.” Here, Brimhall shifts the mood by describing the present in juxtaposition to the past. Now, their relationship has decayed and their love sounds like the weakening sounds of a train as it rides further and further away.

Brimhall also uses nature to contrast the mechanical and civilized world. The nature and the mechanical are often seen as two opposing forces. Nature came first, and humans utilized and took advantage of its resources to benefit the complex needs of humans. She uses mechanical images of clocks, maps, telephones, and cities in a negative way. For example, she says “instead of trees there were clocks, | instead of chimes there was a fear of midnight” (Brimhall, 13). In this line, clocks replace nature and instead of the enchanting sound of chimes, there was a fear of time running out. In another poem 18 she says “sing to forget the hours, | the days, the weeks like rocks in our stomachs” (Brimhall, 18). Here, singing is a form of personal expression and a way of escaping the constraining measurements of time such as hours, days, and weeks that weigh us down. On page 18, Brimhall says, “you set fire to our maps and give your faith | to the voyaging starlight. Night arrives with clouds” (Brimhall, 18). Here she is using nature to guide her instinctively and faithfully. History has been the increased organization of complex knowledge. As humans have evolved and become more civilized, we have found different ways to organize our knowledge about the universe. Maps are an invention used to organize geographic knowledge.

Brimhall again uses nature in contrast to civilization on page 41: “she clears her throat, slides her knife through a tomato” (Brimhall, 41). In this slightly different example, Brimhall clears her throat in cold response to her husband’s kiss. Here she is probably in the kitchen, cooking food. Readers get a domestic image of a housewife being passive aggressive by clearing her throat to show she is angry. Instead of openly and instinctively expressing her anger, she is keeping composed.

Nature in itself is wild, raw, and instinctive. It is untouched and untamed by civilization and humanity. Brimhall describes human experiences using nature and therefore puts humans in a primitive light. Physical attraction is instinctive and she describes relationships in an animalistic way, especially the raw emotions of jealousy, betrayal, and possession that come along with cheating. It is clear that Brimhall’ use of nature imagery is effective in many varying ways. It offers beautiful, universal images to complement narration, it gives readers hints of other cultures, it sets an emotional mood, it gives the feeling of primitive, instinctive experiences, and contrasts mechanics and civilization.