"Elephant" Poems in Natural History

Dan Chiasson’s Natural History is a book of poems that explores the depths of the human mind and imagination in several different manners. Chiasson uses several literary references in his work, sometimes even writing from the perspective of his subjects, for example his poem “Randall Jarrell,” which he writes in Jarrell’s first person perspective, and even refers to himself, Dan, in the third person (“I’ve never  written in a way that really pleases Dan.”) Chiasson plays with these senses of perspective and voice a lot in this collection. What I found most interesting was his poems from the perspective of a circus elephant.

Much of Chiasson’s inspiration for Natural History came from Pliny the Elder’s Historia Naturalis, an ancient early encyclopedia which is said to contain all the ancient knowledge. In it, Pliny reports an observation of an elephant, which Chiasson includes in Natural History as a stand alone poem in itself:

It is known that one elephant, who was

rather slow in learning his tricks and

had been punished severely by his

master’s beating, was discovered later

that night, alone in his tent, practicing

those tricks.

                                                —Pliny,

                  Natural History, Book VIII

                                                                       

Chiasson uses this text, presenting it in its raw form, showing the incredible human quality to it, and to this animal and its emotional insecurities. Who even knew an animal had such depth? Chiasson plays on this, creating a voice and a perspective for the elephant in his three “ The Elephant” poems—or what Kay Ryan refers to in the New York Times Book Review, as “a creature who seems to be half man and half elephant.” The first elephant poem contains the lines, “People connect me with sadness/and often, rationality” and “We elephants are the images of humility,” which I, being an elephant lover, identified with. Where Chiasson really creates, however, is when he flips these images on their heads, and reveals an intense self-awareness within these creatures, particularly in the beautifully disturbing last two last two stanzas, in which he discusses their “melancholy migrations to die:”

            Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs,

                        tossing grass up to heaven—as a distraction, not a prayer.

            That’s not humility you see on our long final journeys:

                        it’s procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down (26).

Here Chiasson presents this depth of self—the self being such a complicated, contradictory and sometimes irrational thing—and assigns it to this creature who is so often associated with selfless rationality.

            The third “Elephant” poem discusses the death of the elephant, of which the speaker thinks, “Better to die/this way than in obscurity, on the empty plain” (45).  It seems that there is a concern of purpose here, of which this speaker, the elephant is lacking (“my body a sack of garbage, hooves bound, the world turned upside down”) in a very human anxiety. The elephant becomes but a celebratory decoration in his death—an ornament around which to gather the fruits of entertainment—but wasn’t he always?

            I had a harder time with the second “Elephant” poem, particularly the intercutting of the human parts about the department party and the masturbation. I thought that detracted from the tone that Chiasson had been creating, by imagining this hidden psyche and revealing to us these anxieties and griefs through the elephant’s eyes.