Craft Essay as a Set of Commands
First, read the following poem;
She Spent A Year Hallucinating Birds by Jill Alexander Essbaum
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/92035/she-spent-a-year-hallucinating-birds
They perched on roofs and fences and sills. They posed statue-still on catenary lines. They aligned along cables like prayer beads on rope. They amassed en masse on the cemetery lawn and marauded the broad, yawning fields like cattle. Their cackles were black. Each shadow dove and pecked. They nested in chimneys and chirped at the chime of the church bell. They worked in shifts. Clocked out at odd hours. They laid their eggs in the Vs of trees. They teemed on the dry-baked banks of creek beds, streams the sun had overseen. They teetered on the bed-knob tops of flagpoles. They pitched like pennies into founts. They pitched like babies into wells. They thumped at doors then skulked away like hoodlum teens. They jabbed her. When she cried they did it faster. Everyone knows what happened next. Some grew big as sunflower stalks, others tall like bonfire flames. Or moving vans. Or the sick, brick houses people die inside of every night. Their hatchlings canopied the sky. Was it her fault, then, when they pinned her to the ground and thrust their feathers down her throat? Or wormed between her legs in bad-man ways? Or rattled plumes and whooped and beat her body with their wings? Or locked their talons to her thighs and tra-la-la-ed that ditty from the old-time music box? Or forced their whiskies past her lips? Or put her in the pillory? This was foreplay, in a way. They rolled in rabid packs and woofed like dogs. She couldn’t throw a bone. The meat was gone. They chased her and they named her and they boiled her tears and bathed her. Then they ate her.
1. It’s important to read slowly. Try reading aloud. This will help you to get a sense of the rhythm—a good place to start as you begin to break down any poem.
a. The repetition of “They,” here is what makes this poem so successful. As the poem moves forward, we see the escalation from simple, longer lines into increasingly quick and choppy clauses which make the poem read faster and more urgently.
b. The “They,” mentioned throughout this poem is ambiguous. We have no idea who “They,” are, except for the title; so, the title becomes the only reference point we have for this protagonist’s abuser—and this leaves an open-endedness to this writing, a sense that we don’t know precisely everything that is going on—we might have less information than we think we do, as readers. An uneasiness governs this poem, culminating in a final climax.
2. If you have written something related, be sure and mention it, like this interview with Chen Chen in Gasher which talks about titles and their impact: https://www.gasherpress.com/post/what-is-the-more-complicated-truth-i-m-not-facing-a-conversation-with-chen-chen-on-vulnerability. It’s always useful to hype up your own work if there is some kind of connection.
3. Is there any kind of imagery or language you are particularly interested in or inspired by? Pull out a line or two:
They aligned along cables like prayer beads on rope.
Or:
They nested in chimneys and chirped at the chime of the church bell.
4. Now you must talk about why you were drawn to these lines. Here, you can show some awareness of poetic technique, showing your knowledge and even mentioning other related poems if you have any that immediately come to mind.
a. For the first line, “They aligned…” the “prayer beads,” is an immediately eye-catching and specific metaphor. It brings religious themes into work which seems to be devoid of any kind of hope or faith. This is clearly intentional. We see Essbaum bringing us into what is perhaps a more nuanced and complex space than we previously realized. Not only is this world that she has crafted clearly threatening, but there is an element of religion and even perhaps punishment or cruelty which was not obvious earlier.
b. The second line shows Essbaum’s attention to detail with the alliteration. This is a sharply empathic line, and it leads to the church bell—another religious reference. This review in The Rumpus explores poet J. Estanislao Lopez’s collection We Borrowed Gentleness, which often dips into such themes: https://therumpus.net/2023/08/02/j-estanislao-lopez/, if further reading is helpful.
5. The poem, as we continue to read, starts to break down. Structure is the most important element to talk about at this juncture. Talking about the history of the prose poem can be important at this point, and it might even be helpful to mention French writers like Rimbaud or Baudelaire, who helped popularize the form. Even quoting one or two lines of their work could be a contrast from the Essbaum poem—which has become so charged that readers may need a break from considering it in such tight detail.
6. Structure is important because the language of the poem has become so elevated and then speculative. Check out this poem by Marianne Chan which does something similar: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/156325/my-therapist-talks-about-biddle-city. As you write your craft essay it will be useful to quote from these sources and format their citations properly—a skill to brush up on.
a. As this poem becomes more and more speculative and spills into the territory of magical realism, it’s important to make sure the reader feels grounded in the poetic space. For the reader of a craft essay, we want to feel as if the writer understands the nature of the breakdown of the writing and can talk about how it serves the poem. With a line like: “Some grew big as sunflower stalks…” we as readers need to understand that you as a craft writer understand and can justify this poetic move, that you understand the poem and its motivations.
b. This is a tricky poem and there is much that works under the surface, but at its core, it’s depicting an assault, or series of assaults, as well as hinting at the larger structural problems with the patriarchy. Understanding this, giving contextual clues by sharing lines like, “Was it her fault, then, when they pinned her to the ground and thrust their feathers down her throat?” and helping readers to this conclusion without being too obvious, will be the key to this review.
7. It’s a painful poem in many ways. It’s a poem built on deep emotion but also warped with a vein of irony. The reader needs to appreciate the elegance of this solution, the rapid-fire short sentences which graphically describe the violence of this woman’s experience. At times she is quite clear; at other times more obscure. The push-pull of this technique should be emphasized in the craft writing that concerns this poem.
a. The detail of this poem, and its relentlessness, are the things that stay with us as readers after we put the poem down. This poem does not flinch. We get it all and we get it all, quickly. We don’t hesitate. This can be a useful technique for writing about experiences that feel too complex to write about.
b. And the metaphor of hallucinaitng birds? Aside from the logistical and physical question, a longform narrative metaphor can give a sense of cohesiveness to a piece of writing that allows it to explore an emotional state without having to worry too much about checking back in with the reader.
8. As we work with difficult texts, the thing to remember is: what is this work trying to do? This is key to all craft writing. If you break down a piece into its components, you will start to see how it has been built and you can teach that to others. You can continue to learn. It’s a big world out there.