Natural History - Dan Chiasson

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.

. . . is poetry picking a pretty word,
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

Natural History- A Collection of Human Experiences

Dan Chiasson takes the title of his collection of poetry- 'Natural History' from Pliny the Elder's 'Historia Naturalis'- in which Pliny attempts to record all of the ancient Roman knowledge. 'Historia Naturalis' gave the model that all future encyclopedias were based off on- this ties into Chiasson's work as his collection of poetry is suggestive of the fact that like an encyclopedia, a human being is a collection of all things in the world- experiences that are physical and emotional. And so in Natural History- Chiasson gives to his readers individual poems that come together beautifully almost in a manner, reminiscent to an encyclopedia. 

What I loved most about the book was the sheer variance in the tone and the style of the poems. Which on the first reading was mildly unsettling, but really reflected back to the almost encyclopedic style of the book-- the dissonance in the styles and the way he wrote about different subjects made me think about how true to life his poetry was- we react differently to different things- so why should poetry about them be similar?

And so, we have "Love Song (Smelt)"--

When I say "you" in my poems; I mean you. 

I know its weird; we barely met

You must hear this all the time, being you. 

That night we were on the opposite ends of

the long table, after the pungent

Russian condiments, the carafes of tarragon vodka 

the chafing dishes full of boiled smelts

I was a little drunk; after you left

I ate the last smelt off your dirty plate

--which is written in very matter-of-fact way. Chiasson states exactly what he wants to say exactly the way he would say it- no pretension and no hiding behind extended metaphors. His tone is colloquial, cheeky and edging on being almost smug. And it fits because he's talking about a situation where he feels taken by a woman he's met at a nice restaurant at probably a social function- the modern version of romance- colored by the rosy hue of inebriation. 

At the same time, Dan Chiasson also gives to its readers- "There Is A Star In The Sea"-- 

There is a star in the sea, and it burns up everything

it touches. Though men who walk on land deny it. 

One night a star fell from the sky and landed in the sea.

It had the good sense to become a fish but the wit

to keep its shape.It sleeps on the bottom of the sea,

but one day, I'll play a trick on it--I'll turn the ocean

Upside down! then it will shine again, coral bluff

rusted galleon in the night sky and I will pray to it

--Which has been written in a whimsical tone. Despite the sparseness in the description- it invokes powerful imagery. Nature is personified in the star which is depicted more as live creature as opposed to a ball of hot gases, in its decision to become a fish- which shows the way human beings perceive nature- often with a sense of wonder. This poem was my favorite because it made me nostalgic of my babyhood when my father used to tell me bed time stories before tucking me in.

'Natural History' is a collection of human experiences- because with Dan Chiasson, you can experience the grunge of a modern day romance to the wonder of nature. 

-Smriti Bansal

Uniformity Through Sonnets

Ellen Bryant Voigt writes about the 1918 Influenza Epidemic in her book of poetry, Kyrie. In Kyrie, Voigt attempts to find meaning and or a place of intersection between the wildly different demographics of people who lived through it, or were killed during it.

I found it very interesting that Voigt employed the form of sonnets to tell the story of twenty five million dead people. Sonnet form is arguable the most well known form of poetry written, and it is interesting that Voigt employs such an ancient form, already deeply instilled with other meanings, for telling a story that Voigt is so committed to. However, Voigt uses the sonnet form well, and strays away from Shakespeare by writing all of her sonnets in blank verse, and often making unusual line breaks.

To me, the book was about acceptance. It is not trying to convey how it feels to have influenza, but rather, in the face of certain death, how one responds. In the battle of fate versus free will, influenza is a guarantor of fate. Once symptoms show up, there is nothing the doctor can do, and many people died. Obviously, not even the majority of the infected people died, however it was deadly that it appeared that way. Kyrie helps people find acceptance in such a world.

The "Prologue" communicated this the best:

After the first year, weeds and scrub;
after five, juniper and birch
alders filling in among the briars;
ten more years, maples rise and thicken;
forty years, the birches crowded out,
a new world swarms on the floor of the hardwood forest.
And who can tell us where there was an orchard,
where a swing, where the smokehouse stood?

This is a poem about the passage of time, and suggests that time heals everything. Or, if it does not heal, at least it will help forget. This is perhaps the best way to approach death: acceptance. Because birth and death are things that everybody has in common, yet people are always surprised when the end comes. I just love how this poem sounds. It is peaceful. The rhythm begins slow and short, and builds a little, like quickening of waves during a storm, until it ends with the question: who can tell us? I do no think it is rhetorical. Perhaps, questions are the only things can bring acceptance.

Kyrie Response

Jack Breene

Kyrie Response

CW- Maffei

            In her poetry book Kyrie, Ellen Bryant Voigt uses three distinct sections to tell her story. The book follows a family living in a small town during 1918 and tells the tale of a flu outbreak, during which time World War I was raging over seas. In the three sections, we see a small town before, during and immediately after World War I. 

            The first section I found to be the most interesting because it focuses on the cover of something bad. In many of the entries, I found that Voigt was building towards the outbreak, a development the characters seem to be aware of as well. In one of the poems, Voigt tells of a bed that has been with the family for many years. (Pg. 19) In this bed, members of the family have experiences every stage of live, including births, marriage, divorce, eventually death. No mater how the circumstances of this family change, the bed is the same. I told this to mean that despite the fact that the bed is consistent with being associated with important life stages, it is also the inevitable final place for everyone. I thought this to mean that good things come to an end. The first section also borrows lots of imagery from the war as the tension builds leading up to the outbreak. 

In one of the poems, the narrators sister has a dream about animals fighting in a war (pg. 24). I liked this poem because it really showed how Voigt uses these poems as a connected web to both paint a picture of what life was like in this family and also tell a story of the war and flu. In this poem, the animals fighting the war represent the animals at the farm we learned about in an earlier poem. (can’t remember the page number, it was about chickens) Animals fighting a war means that strife was about to visit the farm, a place that is describes as being very far from the apparent danger of the contemporary world. The last line, “I didn’t know it was us she saw in the bloody trenches” it confirms that these children were about to face struggle of their own, the narrator just didn’t know it at the time. I also liked this poem because it reminded me of Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams in the old testament. I think relatively obscure biblical references are really powerful and especially this because it speaks to how religion played a role in the life’s of this family. Also, the both the poem and story are centered around dream interpretation which I found to be an interesting parallel. 

Voigt and Voice

Ellen Bryant Voigt’s reputable collection of poems title Kyrie is an endeavor of heartfelt experimentation in the efficacy of voice in evoking the microcosm, the personal struggles, of a larger tragedy. Her collection is a series of recollections and thoughts projected from the minds of patients caught in the Influenza Epidemic of 1917. What is fascinating in this collection is the way that Voigt handles the myopic of different people and conveys individuality in each one of their voices while simultaneously reprising specific characters. In her distinctions, each poem, albeit similar in length and structure, have different fashions of expressing themselves and the tragedies that they invoke to the reader.

               Voigt is a master of throwing voices, employing a repertoire of distinct ideas or abstractions that are fed through differing patterns and ways of speaking. It is actually almost safe to say that each different character (as opposed to not every because some do reoccur) is perfectly distinguishable from the previous. For instance, take the two poems on pages 26 and 27, the first reading like:

My brothers had it, my sister, parceled out

Among the relatives, I had it exiled

 in the attic room. Each afternoon

Granfather came to the top stair, said

“How’s my chickadee”, and left me sweet

And the poem on page 27 reads:

O God, Thous hast cast us off, Thou has scattered us

Thou hast been displeased, O turn to us again.

Thou hast made the earth to tremble; Thou hast broken it;

Heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh

Thou hast showed Thy people hard things; Thou hast made us

To drink the wine of astonishment

The language changes dramatically even, from the halcyon reminiscence of a young person, or so at least it would seem so, to the fire and brimstone sermon of a deeply religious person. The tones and the approaches of perspective to the suffering they endure are even different, playing with the lenses in which people cope with their demise, taking comfort in either memory or in salvation or in the myriad of fashions that other people within these pages take to.

               Then there is the reprisal of characters, their thoughts not confined to a single instance of poetic thought, but rather they have more poems dedicated to the progressing emotions that press upon them as death nears. Some examples are much more clear, such as the poems that begin with “Dear Mattie”, but, nonetheless, even without that introduction, they share similar languages and themes of travel and the continuity of quotidian life, the insistence of things that will be done. Then there are others where the language and theme is key to realizing that a former speaker is present, such as the case with the reverend, when on page 52 we read:

I cried unto God with my voice….he gave ear unto me.

In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord;

My sore ran in the night, and ceased not;

My soul refused to be comforted.

I remembered God, and was troubled;

I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed.

I am so troubled I cannot speak.

See, even though there is nothing specified about who is speaking, no indicator nor reference, one can tell from the language used that it is very well the same person speaking on pg. 27 with the same pious sermon dialogue.

               Hence, Voigt is able to project multiple characters through her mastery over detailing their lives and the throwing of voice in a manner that is difficult to achieve

Lack of Emotional Transcendence in Kyrie

What I found most interesting about Ellen Bryan Voigt’s Kyrie is the way each poem feels as if it were written by someone different. If I had been told that this book were a compilation of poems written by different people about the same subject (Influenza outbreak of 1918), I absolutely would have believed it. In considering voice, I think that Voigt’s poetry and general language powerfully tells a different story with each turn of the page, and allows us as readers to focus strictly upon the poem we’re reading rather than mulling over what we’ve already been exposed to. It was a quick read, and I’m still trying to figure out whether that fact is a good thing or a bad thing. After careful contemplation of the pros and cons of Voigt’s book—stylistically, thematically, visually, etc—I’ve decided that this is probably the book I’ve enjoyed least out of all the ones we’ve read through this semester. 

Additionally, I think it can be said that these poems can stand just as solidly by themselves as they do together as one cohesive collection. I could have just read one or two of them and been satisfied with my exposure to the topic and to Voigt’s writing. 

What I had the biggest problem with was the subject matter. This is my least favorite book of poetry, and I’m not sure if that’s because of Voigt’s personal style (probably not) or the lack of interest I have in the subject matter. I’m compassionate toward the deaths that occurred as a result of the pandemic, but it’s not something I can personally relate to so that removed a lot of emotion for me that I think would have made the poems stronger in my mind. None of them resonated with me; I couldn’t possibly choose a favorite. It is possible that I’m comparing Voigt’s collection to the other books of poetry we’ve read—Rookery, Nox, etc—in which case I definitely prefer the latter two to the former. However, I really believe that I wouldn’t have liked this book of poetry either way.

Voigt’s conversation of the pandemic of 1918 isn’t conveyed in an interesting way. The nature imagery that she utilizes frequently doesn’t seem to possess much depth, and that I believe was severely disappointing as I was reading this book. I sensed very little metaphor, few uniquely-worded images, and because of this, I felt like the emotion concerning the sickness and death addressed failed to transcend the words on the page and into my head.

P.S. Yes, I liked this less than Nox!