A Convergence Of Birds (13 page)

Joseph Cornell

OBJECT 1941

1941

14.5 x 10.5 x 3.5 in.

box construction

Joanna Scott

ONCE WE’RE SETTLED and I’ve figured out how to work this machine, the switch here, that’s it, now if you could dim the lights, Mrs. Dewitt, yes, completely, and shut the door. All right then.

I’ve been invited to speak to your society today about birds and their attributes. We’ll begin with the Troglodyte genus, T. Fulvus, the common house wren. Brown, banded with dusky gray, length about 4 inches. To quote the Honorable S. G. Goodrich, “The species has a very merry, rollicking song, and displays great antipathy to cats, especially those which venture near their nests.”

It’s useful, don’t you think, to take a good long look at a familiar species from time to time?

No, Mr. Cornell, the negative is not for sale.

Onward. Here we have—

You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Dewitt. This is not a bird. This is a representative of the Homo sapiens species, circa 1920. Otherwise known as Maria B, native of Wethersfield, Connecticut. A common housewife. Note the sling. Mrs. B’s right arm is in a cast up to the elbow. Mrs. B isn’t smiling. Mrs. B, generally humorless, could usually be counted upon to smile for photographs. But for this photograph Mrs. B had no reason to smile because Mrs. B had a broken arm.

Yes, Mr. Flaherty, I took this photograph.

No, Mrs. Dewitt, I am not wandering from my topic. If you’ll bear with me.

There, no, wrong way. Here we go, one more, all right then. The nest of a wren with seven peach-colored eggs. Note how the eggs are sprinkled evenly with purplish flecks. If you look closely you’ll notice that the feathers lining the nest are not only wren. There is evidence of sparrows, martins, a robin. This is characteristic of the nest of T. Fulvus.

Which brings me to my first word of advice for you birders: Never disturb a wren’s nest, not even if T. Fulvus builds it in the pocket of your raincoat, as she’s been known to do. Let me repeat: Never disturb a wren’s nest. Remember this. Mrs. B forgot, or else she was never warned. My neighbor, Mrs. B of Wethersfield—let me go back, no, wrong way, back again, one more, here we are—Mrs. B, my neighbor in Wethersfield, ripped a nest from the cornice under the eaves of her house one fine May morning because she could not stand to be woken by the singing of the wrens, and in June she fell off a ladder and broke her arm.

No, Mrs. Kemp, I wasn’t there when she broke her arm. I was away at college at the time. What? Harvard. What? Yes, thank you.

Next we move on to P. Cristatus. The peafowl, tinted blue and golden-green, with his long, glittering tail, the feathers bejeweled with eye-spots. The proud, prancing, polygamous peacock, native to India but naturalized as a domestic bird around the world.

Who in the audience would be willing to demonstrate the shriek of a peacock? Mrs. Kemp? Go ahead, Mrs. Kemp.

Well done, Mrs. Kemp.

Next we’ll turn to… to… to the Peacocks, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1935. A capella singers. Do they look like birds, Mrs. Dewitt? If you’ll bear with me? Thank you. Is there anyone present who ever had the good fortune to hear this group? No? “They sing like angels”—this was the pronouncement of Bing Crosby after hearing The Peacocks at a club in New York in the winter of 1935. The endorsement should have been the beginning of their rise. Instead it was the peak before their steep decline. Why was it they sang like angels one day, and the next day they couldn’t sing on key? Why was it they were all the rage in 1935, and a year later they were out of work?

Yes, Mr. Flaherty, I saw them on several occasions.

No, Mr. Cornell, I did not get their autographs.

Here we have the Peacocks on stage at a county fair, Midland, Illinois, 1936—one of their last performances. If you look carefully, you’ll see that each one has a peacock feather strapped to his leg—courtesy of Bing. Angels must have feathers, he insisted, and the next day he had a box of peacock plumage sent over to the hotel where the singers were staying. Beginning in the winter of 1935, the Peacocks wore peacock feathers whenever they performed. Each with a peacock feather strapped to his right leg—their trademark and their curse.

Hence my second point to emphasize: If you must collect peacock feathers, do not bring them onto a stage.

Yes, Mr. Flaherty, I took this photograph.

No, Mr. Cornell, I do not have a peacock feather of my own.

All right then, we’ll move on to the Corvidae. Corvus americanus. The common crow. Color a glossy blue-black, seventeen inches in length. A vagabond, a pest, he is trapped in clap-nets, poisoned by farmers, shot by bounty hunters. But still he persists, enabled by his extreme intelligence. I knew a man who found a fledgling crow, took it home, and kept it as a pet. Let me show you—

Mr. Z, of Meridian, Massachusetts, 1927. Yes, another Homo sapien, Mrs. Dewitt—Mr. Z with his pet crow, Rook, on his shoulder, the first crow of six kept by Mr. Z. Rook learned to open the latch of the front gate for Mr. Z when he came home from work. He’d fly at strangers, screaming in fury, until Mr. Z called him off. Soon even Mr. Z’s friends stopped visiting. Then Mr. Z lost his job. The following week a tree fell on his house during a storm. He grew progressively weaker and became prone to dizzy spells. He stirred the smelling salts into his soup. He put his shoes on the wrong feet and wore his wrist-watch upside down.

Everything was going to ruin for Mr. Z.

You see before you Magpie, Mr. Z’s second pet crow. Magpie appeared out of nowhere one day. She sat hunched on Mr. Z’s fence all morning long, and eventually Rook flew over and hunched beside her, and after that the two crows were inseparable.

Here again is Mr. Z—the same Mr. Z, prospering, as you can see. He’d found another job, a better job, in a local drugstore. Also employed at the drugstore was the young widow who would turn out to be his future wife. Though he was still sickly, things were looking up for Mr. Z.

Here, next, the Dainty Maw, Mr. Z’s third crow. This one he purchased from a migrant worker who had kept the crow on a leash day and night. The crow, with nothing to eat but rotten windapples and the occasional scrap of sandwich thrown to him by his owner, was ailing. Mr. Z paid two dollars for him. It took just one week on a proper diet for the crow to be restored to health.

As the health of the Dainty Maw improved, so too did Mr. Z’s health. He regained his balance, his energy, his appetite. He put on weight. His hair thickened. He married the widow on a brisk fall day.

Next we have Mr. Z’s Corby, his fourth Corvus americanus, who was lured from a nearby rookery by the chattering of Magpie. Corby is a beautiful specimen, as you can see—tinted with a purplish gloss, long-winged, with a crest on his forehead, as though he had a bit of the jay in him. He was as arrogant as a jay and took every opportunity to peck the others, especially after he learned that Magpie was unavailable.

Here are Mr. and Mrs. Z circa 1928, proud comanagers of a Liggett Rexalls. Notice the string of pearls Mrs. Z is wearing. Notice the ring on her left hand.

But now the story of Mr. Z takes another turn, with the arrival of crows number five and six, Hood and Gor, a morose pair who abandoned their own flock but never wanted much to do with the crows of Mr. Z. Here you see them on Mr. Z’s roof, perched on the edge of the gutter, lazily watching the world go by. Day and night, month after month, they watched. They watched Mr. and Mrs. Z walk up the road toward town each day. They watched Mr. Z push his mower around the yard. They watched Mr. Z grow thin and weak. They watched Rook fly at the doctor when he came up the front walk. They watched Rook fly at the doctor when he left. They watched Mr. Z carried away in coffin. They watched the snow fall. They watched Mrs. Z come out of the house alone. She paused, waiting for Rook to unlatch the front gate. She slipped on the icy sidewalk but caught herself and stayed upright. She turned, looked up at Hood and Gor, and shook her fist at them. Why? she thought. Why was she a widow again? Why?

Which leads me to my final piece of wisdom for the evening: If you’re going to keep crows, remember that one crow is bad, two’s luck, three’s health, four’s wealth, five’s sickness, and six is death.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen—an introduction to some of the more influential attributes of birds. With more time I would have considered the owl, the starling, the seagull, maybe even the titmouse. Perhaps we’ll have another occasion. At any rate, to review quickly the material we’ve covered in today’s lecture: Destroy a wren’s nest and you’ll break a bone within the year. A peacock feather on stage will bring misfortune. And how many crows bring health?

Brilliant, Miss… Miss? Miss Lucas!

The point, Mrs. Dewitt? Why the point is, we must pay attention to the birds! Not just cast a glance in order to make an identification, but really notice them. Their habits and moods and skills and histories. Their feather barbs and powder down, their reptilian feet and horny sheathed beaks. Their black spinel eyes that see everything. Their call-notes, their clattering and fluttering. Pit-wit, pit-wit, cries the sandpiper. Chip-chip-chip, trills the chipping sparrow. The twilight song of the wood pewee. The dawn song of the kingbird. What are they trying to tell us? What have we overlooked? We give them names and classification, we map their migratory paths, we organize the information, and then we go home to dinner. But information is worthless without the exaltation of experience. There is more to learn from the world than simple facts. We must take our time to notice, really notice, what we’re looking at. If we paid attention to the birds, we would see what’s coming!

Mrs. Dewitt, the lights, please. I thank you all for listening. It’s been a pleas—

Summa cum laude, Mrs. Kemp.

Yes, Mr. Flaherty, I call myself a scientist.

No, Mr. Cornell, not a single one of my negatives is for sale. Good night.

Joseph Cornell

UNTITLED {PARROT AND BUTTERFLY HABITAT}

c. 1948

box construction

Diane Ackerman

Abracadabra, and birds fly.

Meaty yet ghostlike, they change shape

to pirouette on high, casting daggers

of glare or broad black shadows.

To the devout, flying crucifixions.

Sitting nearly motionless on a limb,

they continue flying, but at zero speed,

as the wind soughs through them.

Even their fallen feathers fly.

Like shamans or courtiers,

they rehearse the intricate rituals

and ceremonies that rule lives.

A courting crow on the outs

performs an appeasement gesture,

dropping a succulent berry

at a glossy female’s feet.

She stops chattering abuse,

edges closer, burbles, rolls a rebus eye.

Another male stages his own

private one-bird vaudeville show

with hopscotch, tap dance,

acrobatics, trendy tunes.

Aloft, birds look like parts of sky

that have broken loose.

Alternately angelic and stark,

they slide across the blue on wings

softer than skin, soft as our gold standard

for softness, while constantly

opening and closing an array

of small doors in their wings

(closed with each downflap,

cupping the air, then open on upflaps

so air can stream through). Masters

of silent commotion, do they hear,

feel door feathers slamming shut?

In wistfulness and envy, I gaze at them,

lamenting just how earthbound I live,

and sigh the poignant subjunctive

of our species: If only. If only

I could beguile the winds, if only

I could float the sky upon my shoulders.

Ann Lauterbach

Where whatever the blue was

found its hesitancy as pierced inscription

drew dispersal

back through the sieve towards the eye’s

singular vantage

face of a girl

and the first room on the top floor

1425

the glossed immersion

as if a jar could open space

aught in the old vitrine

thwart of song

thwart the incipience of cloud, and the leftover, omitted arc

a rig for flight

which might have been a habit of scale

or the fast stopped by your gaze

what stalled? the glassy circumference?

the dainty primer of decay? inquisitive ink drained from sound?

the room enlarged beyond fog, beyond the bending annotated way unbound by its wall, where l’etoile

is embossed on the stationery

and the sign is dry —

turn, swift bearer, brief

volition, at the far, the furthest, shore.

Joseph Cornell

TOWARD THE BLUE PENINSULA {FOR EMILY DICKINSON}

1953

14.5 x 10.25 x 5.5

mixed media box construction

Mary Caponegro

How soft this Prison is

How sweet these sullen bars

?/?/?

Some might call the white light harsh, so bright is it, but I find comfort in its angular embrace; it calls to mind an Amherst winter (despite the former’s angles and the latter’s curving hills), during which one, if troubled of mind, could walk and not be seen, hidden by the snow’s silence, or perch at an upstairs window writing (as I increasingly might do instead of walking), writing words that could as well be blanketed by the white page…

A woman carefully placing the nib of her pen in an inkwell, transferring it to a white rectangular surface, making marks in a hand slanted far to the right, then taking the same pen and putting a line through some of the marks she has made.

…Now I perch inside this sweet if stark white cell you, connoisseur of confection, shaped for me of empathy and imagination, and carry out the correspondence you requested of me. How could I not comply, having made so many such entreaties while I was alive? Who would have thought that through my parceled words and your ingenious spiritual rectangle, there could be communication of this sort? I once joked with a dear friend that the correspondence he and I sustained felt like writing notes to the sky, as his replies were scanter than my letters to him. Wouldn’t he be amused to see that I now write notes from the sky?