Dan Chiasson’s Natural
History is a collection of poems written in satirical sense. Most use
animals, the most prominent one being an elephant as seen by the three poems
titled, “The Elephant,” and with the last section being written from the point
of a circus elephant (Ryan). His title refers to
Pliny’s “Historia Naturalis.” The title was taken because Chiasson used Pliny’s
work as inspiration, but only as a model. He “does not re-appropriate the text
in a recognizable manner…What Chiasson was looking to mimic was a different kind
of information” (Cronk). In the back of the
book in Chiasson’s notes, he says that in a few cases, he “borrowed images and
phrases from Pliny” in cases such as the poem, “The Elephant (I).” However, the
poems “derive their elements in their stance, their voice, and the cadence from
Pliny” (Chiasson).
Building on that, I really admire the form of the poetry
in the second and third sections of the book. The form, to me, went really well
with the flow of the poems and I found reading them enjoyable. I also really
enjoyed the topics and the satire in the poems. My favourite would be “There is
a Star in the Sea.” To me, this poem was really well written, especially given
that it is one of the shortest in the books. It really did give me a laugh as compared
to the other poems.
In this poem, Chiasson personifies the star, in that “it
had the good sense to become a fish, but the wit/ to keep its shape.” I found
this line is really applicable to the title Natural History, in that from a
biological standpoint, this was how evolution somewhat works. The animals,
through their genome have this “wit” to evolve over countless generations so
that they can adapt to a new environment.
What I really found comical about this poem was the line,
“But one day I’ll play a trick on it – I’ll turn the ocean / Upside down!” Here
Chiasson speaks as if he could switch the sky and the ocean so that the star
will once again be a star, just so he could “pray to it.”
I found this to be the most comical,
but the poem I found the most interesting was the long poem in the third
section, “Scared by the Smallest Shriek of a Pig, and When Wounded, Always give
Ground.” The poem was about a circus elephant but what I find most interesting
about this poem was the voice from the perspective of the circus elephant, and
the content of the poem itself.
say, “charred” instead of “burned” --
as in “charred in a fire”? Real life is so raw,
all on its own; it hurts; words should perhaps
protect us from real life.
Perhaps words should be a shield, rather than
a mirror; and maybe poems should be
an ornamented shield, like the shields
gods made for their favorite soldiers,
sons and lovers. Poems should be
like people’s faces by firelight:
a little true, for verification’s sake,
but primarily beautiful. Or like
pomegranates: hard to open at first
but, when you get them open, full of sweet granules
of meaning. Once, when I was bathed in wine
as part of a military victory parade,
I was purple for a month --
I liked the looks of me that way,
like a giant pomegranate seed!
That’s what a poem should be:
recognizable reality, but dyed,
a sign that someone here felt joy,
someone was released from pain...
In these verses, Chiasson is
peaking about poetry and what poems should be. I really found that these lines
stayed with me the most after reading the poem. It was as if, a student taking
a course in Creative Writing, I finally got this poetic description of what a
poem should be.
Works Cited
Chiasson,
D. (2006). Natural History and Other Poems. Bloodaxe Books Ltd.
Cronk, O. (n.d.). Natural
History by Dan Chiasson. Retrieved from
http://www.bookslut.com/poetry/2005_09_006546.php.
Ryan, K. (n.d.). Absolut
Pliny. Retrieved from New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/books/review/20ryan.html
"Scared by the Smallest Shriek of a Pig, and When Wounded, Always give Ground" was by far my favorite poem in Natural History as well. I agree with what you've said about what a poem should be, even though I've always sort of maintained the idea that a poem could be all sorts of things. I definitely get what you're saying though, about how the best way to tell someone what a poem should be is through the use of an actual poem! I think it's really effective, and I think that this poem will stay with me as well.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that I really enjoyed was the way Chiasson wrote from the perspective of animals, which is something that I wouldn't have even thought of doing. It adds an interesting twist to an otherwise interesting piece, and I think that it allows us to contemplate all the different ways we could possibly write a poem. It definitely made me think about writing a poem from the perspective of a different animal or from an inanimate object's perspective. The world is seen a lot differently from those "eyes".
I don't know if it's because I really love them, but the poems written from the perspective of or about elephants were the ones I enjoyed the most, and i definitely enjoyed the second and third little sections more than the first as well!
I mostly agree with your analysis of "Scared by the Smallest Shriek of a Pig, and When Wounded, Always give Ground," but I think there’s more to it than what you’ve stated here. Clearly, yes, it is a poem about poetry, and it does a good job of putting into words what is often very difficult to put into words as a starting point for further consideration. I especially feel as though the comparison to pomegranates is accurate, moreso than his final definitive statement on what a poem “should” be.
ReplyDeleteStill, obviously, what a poem is can’t always be condensed into “recognizable but dyed reality.” There are exceptions to every rule, and in this case, I wouldn’t even call it a rule. It is an interpretation, and while it’s a good place to start, don’t you think there are other ways to describe what a poem is, even if it isn’t particularly poetic? Given the opportunity to create an analogy, what would you describe a poem as, even if it’s only getting at the heart of poetic conceptuality?
You picked both of my favorite poems from Natural History! Like you, I loved the humor in “There is a Star in the Sea,” and the depth in “Scared by the Smallest Shriek of a Pig, and When Wounded, Always Give Ground.” While reading the later, I loved the idea of a poem about what poetry should do for those who read them and that words should be used only to represent and protect us from reality. I thought that having those words come out of the mouth of an elephant was a bit odd, but my favorite lines were the last four lines, which made me reconsider my skepticisms about using the elephant as the narrator of the poem. I also found it interesting that the poem about what poetry should do for us, did not in any way do what it said it (as a poem) should do. It did what literature and poetry, in my opinion, are supposed to do for us: create a path that will lead our thoughts outside of the box they are usually trapped in.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I also particularly enjoyed the line in “There is a Star in the Sea,” when Chiasson said “it had the good sense to become a fish, but the wit/ to keep its shape.” I liked your analysis of the poems you quoted, but I think you could expand much more on the author’s use of imagery, which I found to be one of the most beautiful and important parts of Chiasson’s poems. Imagery is one of this poet’s most powerful tools, and I think it is his imagery that particularly impressed me.
I didn't like the poem "Scar by the Smallest Shriek of a Pig and When Wounded, Always give Ground" as much. I liked the perspective of the elephant and the contrast it creates, being so big yet so helpless, but I don't like the "meta-ness" of the piece. I think it could have been better if it wasn't so self aware of itself. I especially don't like when poems talk about the nature of poems. I think that is completely distracts from the point of the poem because instead of going for what it's going for, it explains what its going for. It seems too straight forward yet it doesn't get the point across. I liked the references to war and the military parade. It gave the poem a somber tone. The elephant reminisces about his former glory, as a fixture in great military campaigns of India and Persia, and laments about how far he has fallen.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed "Scar by the Smallest Shriek of a Pig and When Wounded, Always Give Ground" as well. For me, it was a more obvious example of Chiasson's poetic style in the rest of the poems: his humor, story-like poetry, and modern tones. However, I felt that he was searching in this poem for something he does not entirely grasp. There were a few moments of poetic clarity that he provides for the reader, however, I think he fell short of the poem he wanted to write to close his book.
ReplyDelete