Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South

by Jack Temple Kirby

The American South is generally warmer, wetter, weedier, snakier, and more insect infested and disease prone than other regions of the country. It is alluring to the scientifically and poetically minded alike. With Mockingbird Song , Jack Temple Kirby offers a personal and passionate recounting of the centuries-old human-nature relationship in the South. Exhibiting violent cycles of growth, abandonment, dereliction, resettlement, and reconfiguration, this relationship, Kirby suggests, has the sometimes melodious, sometimes cacophonous vocalizations of the region's emblematic avian, the mockingbird.

In a narrative voice marked by the intimacy and enthusiasm of a storyteller, Kirby explores all of the South's peoples and their landscapes--how humans have used, yielded, or manipulated varying environments and how they have treated forests, water, and animals. Citing history, literature, and cinematic portrayals along the way, Kirby also relates how southerners have thought about their part of Earth--as a source of both sustenance and delight.

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The American South is generally warmer, wetter, weedier, snakier, and more insect infested and disease prone than other regions of the country. It is alluring to the scientifically and poetically minded alike. With Mockingbird Song , Jack Temple Kirby offers a personal and passionate recounting of the centuries-old human-nature relationship in the South. Exhibiting violent cycles of growth, abandonment, dereliction, resettlement, and reconfiguration, this relationship, Kirby suggests, has the sometimes melodious, sometimes cacophonous vocalizations of the region's emblematic avian, the mockingbird.
In a narrative voice marked by the intimacy and enthusiasm of a storyteller, Kirby explores all of the South's peoples and their landscapes--how humans have used, yielded, or manipulated varying environments and how they have treated forests, water, and animals. Citing history, literature, and cinematic portrayals along the way, Kirby also relates how southerners have thought about their part of Earth--as a source of both sustenance and delight.
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Genres: History, Nature

361 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 2006

Reviews

[Hank Hershey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kirby's wild tangents are barely related to the thesis of the book, but some are interesting. Other authors do a better job at exposing the dark history of ecology without imposing their own morality. I guess it's better than apologetics.

[Samuel · Rating 2 out of 5]

C. Vann Woodward—mid-twentieth century historian of the South states. He was never termed an environmental historian and yet his Origins of the New South (1951) made it quite clear that “after the Civil War, distant bankers exploited landlords, who exploited sharecroppers, who had only the soil to exploit” (xvi). Woodward said that the South (mockingbirds) may seem bizarre and exotic compared to New England (parakeets) but compared to avians of the Amazon, the southern mockingbird is muted, gray and unexciting (x). Kirby goes on to demonstrate how the homocentric view of the mockingbirds in To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) is false—mockingbirds don’t sing for humans, but they are in fact rather indifferent to humans.

Most of the American South is hot, humid, and well watered most every year. There has been a lot of drastic changes in landscape, and it only had an extremely brief experience with densely built landscapes and the urban life….Nature’s own violent agency not just periodic—hurricane and earthquake—but also steadier phenomena such as humidity, temperature, altitude, morphology and cover, the (mal)function of wetlands, and the meanderings of rivers (xiv). This book may be categorized as environmental history, cultural landscape studies, and fiction/film history (xviii).

Prologue: An Orientation Mostly Along St. Johns River (Florida)
Marjorie K. Rawlings’ The Yearling (1938) set in 1871. “…human effort is often foiled by nature” (6). Hurricane warning system 1898 Pres. McKinley. Hurricane Katrina 2005, still “technology, expertise, and managerial hubris cannot control nature’s furies” (8). Alligators, snakes, apples-and-parakeets, oranges-and-trout and other ecological anecdotes.

Ch. 1: Original Civilizations
1,000 of years of extensive/intensive mgmt by natives—widowed not virgin land (74).
Ch. 2: Plantation Traditions
Ch. 3: Commoners and the Common
Ch. 4: Matanzas and Mastery
Ch. 5: Enchantment and Equilibrium
Ch. 6: Cities of Clay
Epilogue: Postmodern Landscapes

“The American South is generally warmer, wetter, weedier, snakier, and more insect infested and disease prone than other regions of the country. It is alluring to the scientifically and poetically minded alike. With Mockingbird Song, Jack Temple Kirby offers a personal and passionate recounting of the centuries-old human-nature relationship in the South. Exhibiting violent cycles of growth, abandonment, dereliction, resettlement, and reconfiguration, this relationship, Kirby suggests, has the sometimes melodious, sometimes cacophonous vocalizations of the region's emblematic avian, the mockingbird.

In a narrative voice marked by the intimacy and enthusiasm of a storyteller, Kirby explores all of the South's peoples and their landscapes—how humans have used, yielded, or manipulated varying environments and how they have treated forests, water, and animals. Citing history, literature, and cinematic portrayals along the way, Kirby also relates how southerners have thought about their part of Earth—as a source of both sustenance and delight.”

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

An enticing subject-- ecological criticism of the Southern U.S.in media and history-- is quickly smothered by overreaching ambition and a lack of thoroughness. Kirby corrals an impressive and enjoyable body of Southern-themed media, from "Gone With the Wind" to "O Brother, Where Art Thou", but fails to connect them adequately to his theme of ecology. He does succeed in other case studies such as "The Yearling" (both book and film), and this is when the book is at its best. These studies aren't brought into context with each other, and the book feels unfinished.

A good start, a poor finish, a concept that deserves further study.

[Richard W.]

An award-winning environmental history of the American South

[Crystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Provocative, but unfocused and shallow. One expects more from a senior scholar. SOS.