A recent book review

Oni Buchanan: “What Animal”

In her first book, What Animal, Oni Buchanan masterfully expresses the grief that is harbored deep down in the soul of the animal spirit, silenced to the human ear by the animal’s inability to talk, and the human inability to recognize these pains in themselves. Buchanan sees the world as an alien place, that we have tainted the purity of nature and lost our innocence with our cultures and practices. Right in the very first poem “’The Ducks and the Bicycle” Buchanan mixes man-made machines with nature and animals. All at once, the sky and the ducks were torn, violated and destroyed.

Buchanan’s language is beautiful as if a eulogy written on behalf of the poor animals in her poetry. The recognition of the ducks’ impending death is innocent and real that the motion of the bicycle can truly be felt, as well as the stillness of the ducks’ fate:

And left us tucked together on the green, but frozen one and one and one
As if winter swimming in formation on the pond
An instant ice no warning spread between us, held,

All our bodies caught apart—no matter
For the moment—since then, apart. (xi)

It is seen to them as if nature could have done it, but nature would not have because they would have instinctually foreseen its coming.

In all of her poems, Buchanan wraps her words around a carefully laid out scene dissecting conflict of human kind’s tendency to warp the natural world so that we no longer know ourselves. In “The Only Yak in Batesville, Virginia” the Yak is first desirous of the black and white horse, and then imagines a field full of yaks, only to realize that he does not even remember what yaks look like: “and I knew that I had forgotten/ what a yak looks like, though I am a yak,/ and I knew then that I had been away for a long time.” (9). The yak tells us that it is not enough to be the creature that you are if you no longer live as that creature or interact with other creatures. It is all too easy to become enamored with something other than your kind when you forget even what your kind is.

The isolation that Oni talks about is brought upon us by our own actions as individuals as well the larger events from civilization. We work and we work to reach some arbitrary goal that we set up for ourselves until we finally have to put what is natural in an unnatural place, in a zoo perhaps as in “Rent” were the animals are all injured:

..one limping.
One with mange. Others you could not tell
what was wrong exactly, but then,

there they were. (68)

We put the animals in the cages as we put ourselves in apartments and categorize and recategorize the “shelves of everything shelved” (69), but was she says “It was time not/ to alphabetize the shelves again”, we must do something to tell the world maintain its natural state.

Buchanan’s poetry flows smoothly as a well-developed train of thought. The precision that enables her to play music also aids her in writing her poetry. Not one stanza is uttered before the emotion of the next is considered. Sometimes she places in abrupt phrases, short clauses that call attention to what the speaker wants to say but hasn’t quite been able to say. These are moments when the pain the animal’s loneliness has passed the need for descriptive language and an exclamatory utterance is the only thing that will convey the emotion, the only thing that will really break the silence.

I really enjoyed What Animal and see it as a wonderful beginning for her poetical work. Speaking through the animals is a wonderful tool for investigating the natural world that concerns itself on so many levels, and as her poetry says, we forget that much of this pain is caused by humans and it is nice to have us recognize this so that perhaps we can rectify it.

If you want more information about Oni and her work, please look at her website http://www.onibuchanan.com/.

The Histories; the US

Book One

1. I, Heather of Vermont, am here setting forth my history, that time may not forget the doings of men and women, the deeds of our fore parents that are noteworthy, magnanimous, and both their benefits to the world and, in the case of some, devastating to humanity, and by above all, why our nation fought one another.
2. I have styled my story after Herodotus, and did my best to begin with his likeness so that the correlation may easily be noticed. As Virgil modeled The Iliad after Homer in style and context but forming the story into twice as many books, I too changed the number of books of my story to twice that of Herodotus. I drew great pleasure in seeking the material for my stories, but because of the nature of the research (i.e. former knowledge and the stories told to be by some very interesting people who have a great fondness for folklore and history) I am not able to put forth a great list of references, especially since I had to piece together from everything that I had learned to draw my own conclusion as to what the true stories are.


Book Sixteen

1. By this time, the Confederate army was devastated by its depleted treasury, and depreciation of soldiers. A plot, by the Confederate soldier, Bennett H. Young, who managed, through deceit and cruelty, to escape a Union Prison, brought the war to its northern most front, Saint Albans, Vermont. The C.S.A Secretary James Seddon tried to take all of the credit for it, but I shall tell it as it happened, and of the real people that were involved.
2. The Vermonters were always considered to be a very hardy stock, ever since the territory was declared a state in the early year of 1791, making it the first new state of the Nation, which brought the number of states to fourteen, which, in my opinion was a blessing on the Nation as before the states created an unlucky number. I said that Vermonters are known to be a hardy stock; I shall now relate some stories that have been told to me as I visited the area in search for the greatest understanding of our Nation's people.
3. The first thing that one notices when meeting with a Vermonter for the first time is that they will notice that your status as a Vermonter is determined by how many generations your family has been in Vermont. They are a very self secluding people and therefore believe in staying in Vermont, and as much as possible, in the same town in which you were born. When you go to a Vermont town or city you will notice that there will be about three different sire names that they all share, right away, just by giving your full name, a Vermonter can tell whether you are a “True Vermonter” or what they like to call a flat-lander. A flat-lander is anyone who is not from Vermont as they assume that their Mountains are the largest a greatest in the Nation, and since they pride themselves on being so self-secluded and sufficient, they have no way of knowing otherwise. In order to be considered a true Vermonter, one must be at least the third generation born in Vermont, in any other case they find the person to be of less political value and some even refuse to speak to someone who is not considered a “True Vermonter”. Vary rarely do they make exceptions , though in 1864 they were a little more friendly towards new comers as Vermont was still young.
4. It is common knowledge among Vermonters that their cows are very precious creatures. They provided most means of survival, cheese, meat, milk, leather for clothes and shoes, ice cream, yogurt, and some farmers even keep their farms attached to their houses for warmth in the winter. But the people are not the only ones who find comfort in their cows. I have been told, though I never saw any proof of it, though I think that it is worth mentioning just because so many people in the area believe it, that the moose, native to the land, a creature of great stature, standing at around seven feet at the shoulders and weighing up to 1,300 pounds, often has romantic feelings for particular cows. There is one particular story of a young bull moose who fell in love with a Hereford cow, a red and white beef cattle, named Jessica. This bull moose would stomp his hooves and not let the other cows in the herd eat until Jessica ate. Passerby could see the cow in the field being groomed by the moose or napping together. Some say that they had offspring and that the offspring created a new breed of cross cow and moose and that they live deep in the forests of Vermont creating their own herds, steeling cows from farmers and joining them to their herd, but I don’t find this to be very credible.
5. A custom that I heard from what the Vermonters call a Yankee Yarn Spinner, or local storyteller, is how they managed their elderly and weak through their grueling winters. According to the Spinner, some Vermonters learned how to make an elixir that could put these people into a kind of hibernation, similar to a bear, where they would sleep through the entire winter. When spring finally arrives, which takes six to nine months; they use yet another elixir which wakes them up. During this time of hibernation, the weak or elderly don’t age, and sometimes the long rest cures the weak’s ailment. When I asked the Spinner to share the instructions for how to make the elixir so that it may be used to help others he just smiled at me and placed his finger to the side of his nose and walked back into his cottage. Indeed such an elixir sounds fantastical, but the idea does seem implausible, as I have seen many people in Vermont that are much older than the people I have seen elsewhere.
more to come next week...

I began Eleutherios (The Liberator) while I was working third shift in the office. Feeling very much like I needed something more in my life than a desk job and a social life that seems as though it has gone on a vacation without me, I was praying to the god one god I thought might aid me while increases my relationships with the divine. I wonder though, is Bacchus just called the Liberator because of the freedom from social rules that comes from having too much to drink? Or is he really that great a god? The last line is in conversation with John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV.

Eleutherios (The Liberator)

I have heard of the tantric spell of heated flesh,
the mist of ancient perfumes floating in the air,
fire blazing, dancing, reaching to the heavens

as if it could speak to Zeus himself.
His Ladies sing a wine flavored tune,
it is the harvest flare of Bacchus' life,

a party wild and shimmering in the night;
it is so easy to get lost on this night,
to feel love on this night.

I want to feel the magic of the Bacchant's chant,
the wonder of their dance.
Alone, I feel, and sober,

I long for the kiss of an immortal god.
Bacchus roar your mighty song,
a bride of yours I long to be,

find me, ravish me, enter me.

revised 2/15/08