Ornithology

Ornithologies was a very different section of the book from the others. It was something about the language, that drew me in. Even we discussed nature, the preservation of the Earth being one of themes of the book, I feel he really used language pertaining to nature more in this section. You see words like; petal, garden, blossoms, butterflies and the 4 seasons. I also gotta admit I didn't know what the hell ornithologies was. But thanks to handy dandy google, I learned an ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. I'm wondering why Roberson used that as the section of this book.

Before I touch on that, I have to talk about Urban Nature which was a poem I really enjoyed. I thought it was a very fluid poem. The tone of the poem felt soft to me, it didn't have the same roughness or compassion as some of the other poems. He compares the city to New Hampshire and the Midwest saying the city is "not that nature." He describes the city's urban nature as, "just a street, pocket park, clean of any smells, simple quiet, not the same as no birds sing, definitely not the dead of no birds sing."What I'm definitely curious about is the context. Because at first when I read it, I thought he was saying that he disliked the lack of nature. But reading again, I'm wondering if he's trying to suggest maybe there is something beautiful about urban nature as well, despite the fact that the poems  in the book talk about what the city is lacking.

Back to the subject of ornithology, you can see Roberson talks a lot about birds in the poems in this section. But what kind of ideas is he trying to convey? How does he use the birds to tell a story? In the poem ornithology, at first read I thought he was comparing the way birds to travel to humans. He talks about how the birds meet up with one another"as if over a schedule they post and change their perch patterns." Then when he gets to the part about flipping metal panels, I thought he was talking about those leg bands the birds wear. He goes on to describe the panels as, "numbers and letters, arrivals and departures, track numbers times and destinations." Perhaps he was bird watching and noticed how they interacted.