Poetry Friday is with Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe
Photo from Flickr: Kelly Colgan Azar
When I was home last weekend with my parents and my sister’s family, we watched a Carolina wren feed a nest of babies inside a flower pot. I posted about this miracle of nature here. ( I even made a short video of the nesting chicks.)
My summer discipline includes writing a poem every day. In the Practice of Poetry, Deborah Digges offers an exercise titled “Evolutions” that can be traced back to Philip Levine. “When you can’t write, try writing about an animal.” This exercise takes some research. Having the internet at my fingertips helped me find information about Carolina wrens.
This exercise came with warnings: “be careful not to sentimentalize, to usurp the animal you have chosen by turning it into a flaccid symbol for human emotions…The animal is itself.” I tend to over-sentimentalize, so I tried to focus on the behaviors of the birds. After some work and a few writing partner critiques, I feel good about this one.
Reflections on the Teche 
You captured the sweetness without over-sentimentalizing. I love the teakettle tweet! xoxo
I love it! There is happiness here…in the bird and in the author describing it. Well done!
Love this poem, Margaret! I am jealous of “teakettle tweet” because it is so hard to describe birdsong, and you nailed the Carolina Wrens’. They have one of the prettiest songs, I think, and we are lucky that they seem to desire to nest close to human habitations. You’ve inspired me to try to write about my own Carolina Wren story!
It’s wonderful that you moved this special time into a poem, Margaret. They are special birds to watch, though I don’t see many here, but at my brother’s home in Missouri. I like that ‘nest nook’, just right for those tiny birds.
What a descriptive poem, Margaret. I can see everything you are describing. The 2nd stanza is my favorite. A *teakettle* tweet – fantastic word choice! I wish I could hear it. So glad for the pictures you could share to help make it come to life for readers.
A poem a day, huh? I’ve got to get cracking! Now I realize the cardinal that has been waking us up this week is actually begging to be captured in a poem. Love your sweet “Carolina Wren!”
So much bouncing, quivering, swaying movement! Nice layout, too. Very impressed that you are writing a poem a day!!
I kind of lied about that. I am trying to write a poem a day. Some days it’s just revision; some days starts and stops.
I love it! I can completely picture the scene. Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
Love those last three words. The repetition is very representative of parenting.
I like it. The repetition at the end of each stanza works well. We have a nest of some sort of bird in the fern hanging on our porch.
I see you are enjoying your summer freedom to write! There is nothing flaccid about this piece, which is true to the wren’s business. The third stanza is especially fun to say.
I too love the teakettle tweet… and the way ‘teaming’ is almost ‘steaming’… And that looping return… and lots more, actually! Lovely job.
We have a wren who is our neighborhood rooster, “teakettling” or “tweedling” away at 5:00 am with a volume that is incredible for a bird that small! Your poem is just right, and those open baby bird mouths in the video melt my heart!!
Good for you – writing a poem a day! I’ve never seen one of these birds – at least to my knowledge. You captured them wonderfully!
I love the idea of writing a poem each day – I might have to try that myself, as a bit of a morning meditation to help me get through a tough time.
I am very wont to sentimentalism when it comes to animals, so this would be a good exercise for me, too! 🙂
Margaret, I love the onomatopoeia in your poem and how it moves and hops it down the page–and how the lines before are sounds preparing us for this movement, I feel the “Mom and Pop” birds right there.
Lovely, Margaret!