A Theory of Birds

Etel Adnan Poetry Series

by Zaina Alsous

Winner of the 2019 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize

Inside the dodo bird is a forest, Inside the forest
a peach analog, Inside the peach analog a woman, Inside
the woman a lake of funerals This layering of bird, woman, place, technology, and ceremony, which begins this first full-length collection by Zaina Alsous, mirrors the layering of insights that marks the collection as a whole. The poems in A Theory of Birds draw on inherited memory, historical record, critical theory, alternative geographies, and sharp observation. In them, birds—particularly extinct species—become metaphor for the violences perpetrated on othered bodies under the colonial gaze. Putting ecological preservation in conversation with Arab racial formation, state vernacular with the chatter of birds, Alsous explores how categorization can be a tool for detachment, domination, and erasure. Stretching their wings toward de-erasure, these poems—their subjects and their logics—refuse to stay put within a single category. This is poetry in support of a decolonized mind.

Genres: Poetry, American

74 pages, Paperback

First published October 14, 2019

Reviews

[Edita]

[…] I have
wanted love more

than history;
to be chosen
by another bird,

an arranged cluster
of sunflowers, breeding
more sun,

a sun race,
maybe then
a return,

maybe wingspan,
elsewhere.
I am not

a proud beast.
these feathers
are merely pinned

amidst shoulder,
mimicking the sound
of dusk. Soon, soon.
*

In a new city, all I see is memory.

Empty swings, spiders in ceremony
annotating the windows, spines
of all your favorite
books.
No one alone can exist without the others.

The adjacent- I am made being
next to you.

And remade away from and
this is how I learn to bury.

My grief in a strange pond
a funeral birth,
a silver fish.

[George Abraham]

I say this without exaggeration, as someone who reads poetry every day (especially in and among fellow Arab and Palestinian writers): Zaina Alsous has written one of the best poetry collections I've ever read. A Theory of Birds reminds me why I write poetry, pushing language to its limits in a way that pushes us forward, collectively. I've been Returning and re-Reading these poems for the past few months, and every time I re-enter this book, I learn something new. This book is going to be remembered in the Palestinian Anglophone literary canon for generations to come.

[emily]

a tremendous collection of poems, one which i already know i'll be returning to, again and again. brilliant ecopoetic and decolonial poetics that moves language towards the heart-first questions of struggle, history, memory.

[Alycia]

A Theory of Birds is not merely a book of poetry. Just as it reaches across time and space, holding together history, memory, and experience, this collection extends beyond any single genre. It is a critical examination of colonisation, past and present, and a lyrical and potent critique of imperialism, which (true to its title) carves out its own kind of theory enriched by creative practice. Read this book for its stunning recollections of moments lived, its manipulations of syntax and language, and its piercing, yet still tender questions ("Could you understand love as a wooded absence?"). I've learned so much from the poems within.

[J]

Oh wow, the way Alsous pushed language in this collection, and the lyricism of it all. Really fascinating and in-depth approach to various themes, particularly ecology and colonization, with the use of the extinct dodo bird.

[sonya]

“Can the theory of a young girl unlock the door?” Alsous explores the objectification of a people, culture, and herself using extinct birds as a theoretical medium for exploring fetishism, genocide, and historical amnesia. Employing subversive stylisms and syntax, Alsous turns categorical knowledge in on itself, exposing the violence of language, science, and history through their reconstruction, in doing so she imposes readers to consider the impacts of our study. I was enthralled with the literary lineage she called upon, placing her work in conversation with the likes of Sylvia Wynter, Gayatri Spivak, and Karl Marx. Transgressing and transforming English and Arab epistmes, they were not lying when they said this was an “ecopoetics of the highest order” !!!!

[Maia]

A rallying call for liberation. A decolonial poetic against typology. A demand to return to nature, to the divine, to the body. Only then a path revealed to a floating city of birds and women and returnings.

[Carolyn]

Spooky, eerie, dreamy poems.
.
My faves were:
“Arab Making”
Violence
Abortion Fantasy
A Non-Euclidean View of Backwards as a Warm Place to Be

[mumtaz]

such a gorgeous collection of poetry, forever grateful to Sonya for gifting me a copy :')

[S P]

This is a propulsive debut book of poetry exploring the intersections between science, ecology, gender and Occupation. Alsous has an adroit vision and mission: she uses the metaphor of the extinct bird in various guises to mutate colonial violence and put it under the lens of a microscope which leans heavily on archive, historical records, and critical theory. These challenging poems often deconstruct language, grammar, privacy to their limits; they force the reader to reposition the reading experience along a new axis of knowledge and classification. A Theory of Birds heralds an increasingly avant-garde shift in contemporary Arabic-American poetics.

[Ivanna Berrios]

My new favorite poetry collection. I love when poems are loving and have teeth.

[ilan]

i guess i never wrote reviews on here before bc i definitely would’ve reviewed this. this is one of my top 2 favorite books of all time, tied with claire schwartz’s civil service. this book is centered around the extinction of the dodo bird and explores how classification and naming are precursors to genocide, annihilation, and extinction. the book focuses on settler-colonialism on turtle island and in palestine, containing revisions of fifteen poems from alsous’s previous chapbook, lemon effigies, which she has described as being a more personal collection of poems focused on the experience of exile. a theory of birds also engages with a umber of related historical threads: napoleon’s invasion of egypt, the louisiana purchase, the algerian revolution, transatlantic slavery, the haitian revolution, and more. alsous brings in many writers and texts, those she aligns herself with —marx, fanon, darwish, bhanu kapil, etel adnan, ursula k. le guin, dareen tatour, leanne betasamosake simpson, marwa helal, sylvia wynter, and so many more—with and those she positions herself against—napoleon, thomas jefferson, colombus, hitler, and others. anchoring these poems are marxist, feminist, abolitionist, ecological, and anticolonial commitments. in an aaww reading i watched on youtube called “decolonial poetics,” alsous said the project of this book is to “oppose a settler psychology at the level of language.” cannot recommend this book more highly.

favorite poems include:
Can the Dodo Bird Speak?
Description de l’Égypte
Violence
Birth Right
Abortion Fantasy
cinematography

[jq]

"Some of us smash / department store windows. Some of us apologise to our / children before losing the house. Some chant fog, on strike in / the snow." (Public botany)

"there was grove air, / which was turpentine, orange and harvest, and piles and piles of / indentured coiling, there was Syrian Christians petitioning / against Yellow to better own houses" (Naturalisation)

"Can you step outside / while I search the vehicle // a tulip clenching / in a plume of white phosphorus" (Spectacles of privacy)

[J. Baranzelli]

I read this because I thought it would be a collection of poems about birds

It wasn't but it was actually much better and very relevant to the larger world

This is also the only time I read a book of poetry just straight through instead of jumping around, it is a much different experience but this book almost creates a narrative with the collection of poems

Dodo birds...

[birdbassador]

lots of great lines in this one:
"who invented me begging softly to be destroyed" "everything i know and love is made possible by violence""i have this nightmare about fucking napoleon" "the carcass is the canvas"

all that plus recurring bird allegories

sign me up

[Megan E.]

This was a poetry of the month book club pick highlighting Palestine. I earmarked probably half of these poems to revisit. They are light and yet powerful and moving, with meaningful imagery throughout. Just a wonderful collection of poems.

[Carly Miller]

A truly remarkable full-length debut. Every poem had a moment where I went "yes, this is what language can truly do."

[Caitlin]

Zaina Alsous tackles the ongoing violence and violation of coloniality in A Theory of Birds.

[آرمین]

2.9 ⭐️

[Nuha]

Imaginative, light yet meaningful, Alsous is a passionate playful poet.

[Marije de Wit]

<3

[Ariana van Dyck]

so good it's confusing, except not at all

[Dina]

Day 2 of sealey challenge. 3.5 rounded up. A lot of this went over my head.

[Tutankhamun18]

I enjoyed “Translator’s Essay” and “Ethnography” alot. The rest were thematically interesting, but not so much for me in terms of style and evocation.

[Dana]

amelia is always right about me😭

[Aidan]

3.5

forgot i read this but it genuinely was really good as far as this type of contemporary poetry goes

[Urvashi]

Somehow the metaphor of birds fit perfectly within this collection, each piece assessing the trauma associated with occupation and colonization in the present day

[Razan]

“her kitchen is my only country;” - the poet on the subject of her mother.

♾️

“In a high school history class, white children raised
their eyebrows when I raised my voice.

I don’t know what they thought I was capable of;
I wish I was more capable of it.”

[fjord]

The moment I read Violence as it circulated for days in my timeline, I became another person almost. There is always something meaningful to extract in each line, and to truly relish them, you would have to sit and mull and imagine the ways we can work towards developing a world of possible.

[Connie]

from "In Paris, an Arab girl enters the museum": "What makes the body most / remarkable is not knowing how it works."