Bird Lovers, Backyard

by Thalia Field

Thalia Field’s third book with New Directions is a tour de force of blending literary genres (poetry, prose, essay, and drama) and examining our control of the natural world.

Bird Lovers, Backyard continues Thalia Field’s interrogation of the act of storytelling and her experimentation with literary genre. Field’s illuminating essays, or stories, in poetic form, place scientists, philosophers, animals, even the military, in real and imagined events. Her open questioning brings in subjects as diverse as pigeons, chat rooms, nuclear testing, the building of the Kennedy Space Center, the development of seaside beaches, Konrad Lorenz, the American author and animal trainer Vicki Hearne, and the Swiss zoologist Heini Hediger. Throughout, she intermingles fact and fiction, probing the porous boundaries between human and animal, calling into question “what we are willing to do with words,” and spinning a world where life is haunted by echoes. Story and event survive through daring language, and the elegies of history.

Genres: Poetry, Essays

146 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Thalia Field was born in Chicago in 1966. After attending lycée in France, she graduated with honors from Brown University. She has three books of experimental writing/prose poetry published with New Directions: Point and Line (2000), Incarnate: Story Material (2004), and Bird Lovers, Backyard (2009). A novel, ULULU (Clown Shrapnel) was published by Coffee House Press in 2008. Field's writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Chicago Review, Ploughshares, Fence, Theater, Central Park, Chain, and Conjunctions, where she served as editor from 1995-1999. Before joining the faculty at Brown University, where she currently teaches experimental fiction and performance, Field taught at Bard College and at the Writing and Poetics program at Naropa University.

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

I'm one that believes something or other can be taught in a writing course. Whether that be English Comp 101 or some MFA or other. Pressing your writing into a social context will only be a good thing. And from that one writing class I once had taken (it was, thanks to the prof, the hardest I've ever worked for an "A") I recall we had some sort of anthology or other. The kind of thing that would have "models" of good writing or whatever. And of course people get a little itchy about that kind of thing. What should be included in and what gets included out? Etc. But the most important thing to include in--in my never humble opinion--are examples of writing that demonstrate the possibilities of writing. Not demonstrations of actuality, writing that already exists and would be repeated. But rather, these Comp 101 anthologies should above all include writing which can best be characterized as an "opening". In other words, we are in the 'metaphysical' realm of the Heideggerian possibility, not the Aristotelian=Thomist=Cartesian actuality. Moore once reviewed one such anthology and praised it for including as a writing model something from Jack Kerouac ; not because JK is such a great writer but because he demonstrates what can happen when the realm of freedom is offered.

Thalia Field is such a writer that all students of writing ought to be reading. And they ought to be reading her because her writing is that kind of writing you won't duplicate but which will illuminate that clearing of yours which will open you to finding how you will be writing. It's emancipatory fiction.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

A curious little book, this one. Back cover says Poetry in upper left corner. I guess that is as good a category as any if you're trying to classify it. Parts of it do indeed read like poetry. But other parts read like narrative nonfiction. And then there is the section that reads like a verbatim thread from an online gardening forum. The topic: how to get rid of ants in the yard. Another section is a report written by the last remaining Dusky Seaside Sparrow, the first avian species rendered extinct in the U.S. since passage of the Endangered Species Act. A lethal combination of highway construction, mosquito abatement programs, and real estate development drastically reduced and finally eradicated this species. A significant amount of the habitat destruction was connected to construction and facilitation of access to Kennedy Space Center (one wonders if the irony of this was lost on the powers-that-be).

The various disparate components of Field's work are steered by an examination of inter-species relationships, namely human-to-other-species. Most notably it shines a light on how humans sometimes attempt to understand their fellow living creatures but more often end up exploiting or destroying them in pursuit of what they deem to be the greater good. Field communicates this in innovative and sometimes playful ways, without completely relieving the burden of such heavy material. It is, at times, a challenging read, and in full disclosure probably wasn't the best book for me to be reading at this particular time. I'd like to read more of Field when I'm in a less distracted state of mind.

[Rand · Rating 5 out of 5]

RIP DUSKY

In part an exploration of place, species, and what extinction implies. This book tells the sad fate of the dusky seaside sparrow and the people who have erased/replaced those birds on Cape Canaveral.

A sad, charming, beautiful little book that will delight any who enjoy taking the time to contemplate the transience of existence.

[Merany Mathews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely Lovely Lovely. A series of essay-poems about animal and human relations. In the first essay, Apparatus for the Inscription of a Falling Body, Field takes a common "pigeon problem" and turns it into a beautiful discourse on humanness, pigeonness and the importance of thought and conversation. The book often addresses the importance of conversations and language in our dealings with the animal world. One section comes from an online message board on how to deal with ants in your garden, another discusses an animal trainer who "reformed" a biting dog through a mutual understanding of language. Surprising, thoughtful, and beautifully done.

[Ammi Emergency · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn.

[in8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

extrapolated thoughts on it here: http://www.5cense.com/13/336.htm

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zanimljiv, ali ne i sasvim uspeo (meta)književni eksperiment, u kome se živo polemiše o ljudskoj prevlasti nad svim ostalim životnim oblicima. Posebno su bile podsticajne stranice posvećene lirsko-proznoj polemici sa Darvinom i V. Džejmsom. Autorka dolazi i do Vitgenštajna, Konrada Lorenca, Hajnija Hedigera, pa čak i Geringa*, jer se počesto ispostavlja da je govor o prirodi, zapravo, govor o kulturi. Nerazmrsive su te granice, a razmišljanje kako antropocentrizam i nacizam idu ruku pod ruku, jezivo.

Autorka, za šta sam mislio, iz nekog razloga, da je lokalna pošalica, tvrdi da su golubovi leteći pacovi. Evo, ne znam. Ali znam da su mi jezivi oni tanki šiljci nakačeni na strehe i stubove sa ciljem da ih rasteraju. Taj detalj bi joj dobro došao ovde.

*Gering je 1933. na radiju obnarodovao kako će svi ljudi koji budu mučili životinje završiti u koncentracionim kampovima. To nije podrazumevalo samo fizičko maltretiranje životinja, već i njihovo korišćenje u eksperimentima. Hitler je, kolko znam, bio vegeterijanac. Osore bi ovde, siguran sam, imao štošta da doda.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 3/4 stars