Many years ago, poet Timothy Steele had a Northern Mockingbird take up residence right outside his bedroom window. And the bird sang day and night. “I love mockingbirds generally,” Steele said, “but in this case, I did wish that this particular fellow would shut up! And I wrote the poem as a kind of plea to him.”
Enjoy more poems from Timothy Steele and others in our celebration of poetry month!
Mark Bramhill: This is BirdNote.
[Song: 4th Chair by Blue Dot Sessions]
Poet Timothy Steele is known for his love of rhyme, meter, and traditional forms of poetry. He finds that, in trying to secure a cadence or locate or rhyme, he looks at what he’s writing about from new, different angles. And exactly this happened when a Northern Mockingbird took up residence right outside his bedroom window…
Timothy Steele: …and he sang day and night. I love mockingbirds generally, but in this case I did wish that this particular fellow would shut up! And I wrote the poem as a kind of plea to him.
[QP01 0133 Desert - Mockingbird Solo]
Timothy Steele: I was, you know, dazzled and at times irritated by its wild, wild songs. So I started to write about it and settled into the iambic pentameter couplet. And I started to realize that the form was putting me in dialogue with a bird because its song was all over the place, and I was, you know, using this preeminently stable form. I don't expect the bird appreciated it particularly, but I think it made the poem better.
Mockingbird
Erratically, tirelessly, in song,
He does his imitations all day long.
Appropriating every voice he hears,
Astonishingly shifting vocal gears,
He chirrups, trills, and whistles crazily,
Perched at the twiggy apex of his tree.
When argued with by smaller, lesser birds,
He raucously refutes them with their words;
When not receiving notice, as he should,
From earthbound members of the neighborhood
He drops down on to chimney or garage,
Continuing his hectoring barrage.
One might object to his inflated noise,
The pertinacious manner he employs,
Except the sequences which he invents
Are born of urgent pathos, in this sense:
For all his virtuosity of tone,
The singer has no note which is his own.
[QP01 0133 Desert - Mockingbird Solo]
Mark Bramhill: For BirdNote, I’m Mark Bramhill.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Production Manager: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Northern Mockingbird recorded by Gordon Hempton.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2021 BirdNote April 2021 Narrator: Mark Bramhill
ID# steelet-01-2021-04-29 steelet-01
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