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:
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.
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)
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/.
1 comment:
Thanks, Heather. I enjoyed your interpretation of this poet's work.
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