Last class we learned about auguries: the roman augury who reads the signs of birds, augurs who communicate with the divine through reading lightning, rainbows, or storm clouds. Bird flight patterns and bird songs constitute two ways of reading birds. Observation of other natural phenomenon such as the presence of a fox, mule, or a cat crossing your path were also of interest to the augur. Cutting open the bird to read its liver came later. When kept chickens ate well, this was a good sign. When they did not eat, a bad sign. So chickens were kept half-starving. A typical day for the augur involves getting up early, setting up in a sacred space (easy within the city), divide sky into 16 quadrants and reading signs according to that direction. Asking questions such as: "Is today a good day for the king to take the throne?" and listening for the answer. This is where we get the word inauguration.
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The other day we spent some time at the fossil gorge outside Coralville Dam, where you can walk around and look at the fossils embedded in the stone. The flooding of the dam in the early nineties moved the earth, revealing the fossils' presences. We saw fossils of coral and other plants. Many of these were in the range of 300 millions year old, before man, before the dinosaurs. Also a nesting or feeding place for turkey vultures. Spent some time watching them fly above. Moved near the trees and disrupted a group, which took off. Editing my photos later revealed a red tint of their wings, caught in the sunlight. Walked a little down a pathway and saw a hawk resting on a branch.
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Bird songs fall into categories of: 1) a baseline for establishing territory, 2) a song of male aggression, 3) companion calls, 4) alarms for intruders, and 5) food calls of the young. In Shakespeare and other writings there is a secret language of birds. Much like flowers in renaissance paintings, you have to learn how to read the symbols. The augur was the highest authority, higher even than the rulers because they could read these signs. Sometimes certain birds imitated the songs of other birds. A Jay can imitate a hawk call and immediately follow up with the alarm call of the smaller birds--blackbirds maybe--, so the blackbirds take off and the Jay can eat the berries.
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We read Traci Brimhall's Rookery, a book of poems which follows the end of a marriage. The speaker in some of the poems reads the signs--in birds and otherwise--which unveil the secrets of her husband. One poem, "Aubade In Which The Bats Tried To Warn Me" begins: "You used to recite the parts of my body like psalms. / I should have known when you started to kiss / with your eyes closed that your mouth would ruin us." I am thinking about the signs in everyday life. Someone in my cohort had a bat enter her house. This is apparently a good sign, though a bad sign in South America. I saw a crow on top of a house near mine. A few days later I saw a dead crow on the grass across the street. I saw a dead squirrel in the forest by the Maquoketa caves where me and Nathan went exploring and there were a group of people dressed in dark capes having a wedding. I bought a headlamp which I sometimes use walking home from the bar because there are no street lamps on my street.
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It snowed for the first time but it is beautiful out. I am photocopying essays on poetry for my students. Starting with Don Paterson's "Advice for Beginners" found on his website (though I left out the title), and Robert Frost's "The Figure a Poem Makes." I want my students to follow their instincts, to follow the sound and music of the poem rather than go into the poem with an idea or meaning ahead of time. Maybe the entire idea of my assignments is counter to this. Maybe I should have handed out the essays earlier in the semester. Paterson says: "Write the poem you're writing, not the one you want to write. The poem will have ideas of its own, and they're better than yours."
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On Sunday I went to a poetry reading in a half of a house where there were two babies and two cats. We sat on the floor. On Halloween, me and Nathan went to a party on the other half of the same house, where the homeowner said the attic was haunted. Later Nathan told me that our landlord told him that a few years ago cats in the neighbourhood were going missing. They discovered a pentagram in the attic of this house and the corpses of some of the cats which had been used for sacrifices. The house is across the alley from ours. I wondered which half the sacrifices occurred in. Yesterday a woman in my cohort read Prufrock from memory, and lines of it which I had remembered since undergrad nearly moved me to tears. Today I woke up and my left eye was sealed shut.
*
The other day we spent some time at the fossil gorge outside Coralville Dam, where you can walk around and look at the fossils embedded in the stone. The flooding of the dam in the early nineties moved the earth, revealing the fossils' presences. We saw fossils of coral and other plants. Many of these were in the range of 300 millions year old, before man, before the dinosaurs. Also a nesting or feeding place for turkey vultures. Spent some time watching them fly above. Moved near the trees and disrupted a group, which took off. Editing my photos later revealed a red tint of their wings, caught in the sunlight. Walked a little down a pathway and saw a hawk resting on a branch.
*
Bird songs fall into categories of: 1) a baseline for establishing territory, 2) a song of male aggression, 3) companion calls, 4) alarms for intruders, and 5) food calls of the young. In Shakespeare and other writings there is a secret language of birds. Much like flowers in renaissance paintings, you have to learn how to read the symbols. The augur was the highest authority, higher even than the rulers because they could read these signs. Sometimes certain birds imitated the songs of other birds. A Jay can imitate a hawk call and immediately follow up with the alarm call of the smaller birds--blackbirds maybe--, so the blackbirds take off and the Jay can eat the berries.
*
We read Traci Brimhall's Rookery, a book of poems which follows the end of a marriage. The speaker in some of the poems reads the signs--in birds and otherwise--which unveil the secrets of her husband. One poem, "Aubade In Which The Bats Tried To Warn Me" begins: "You used to recite the parts of my body like psalms. / I should have known when you started to kiss / with your eyes closed that your mouth would ruin us." I am thinking about the signs in everyday life. Someone in my cohort had a bat enter her house. This is apparently a good sign, though a bad sign in South America. I saw a crow on top of a house near mine. A few days later I saw a dead crow on the grass across the street. I saw a dead squirrel in the forest by the Maquoketa caves where me and Nathan went exploring and there were a group of people dressed in dark capes having a wedding. I bought a headlamp which I sometimes use walking home from the bar because there are no street lamps on my street.
*
It snowed for the first time but it is beautiful out. I am photocopying essays on poetry for my students. Starting with Don Paterson's "Advice for Beginners" found on his website (though I left out the title), and Robert Frost's "The Figure a Poem Makes." I want my students to follow their instincts, to follow the sound and music of the poem rather than go into the poem with an idea or meaning ahead of time. Maybe the entire idea of my assignments is counter to this. Maybe I should have handed out the essays earlier in the semester. Paterson says: "Write the poem you're writing, not the one you want to write. The poem will have ideas of its own, and they're better than yours."
*
On Sunday I went to a poetry reading in a half of a house where there were two babies and two cats. We sat on the floor. On Halloween, me and Nathan went to a party on the other half of the same house, where the homeowner said the attic was haunted. Later Nathan told me that our landlord told him that a few years ago cats in the neighbourhood were going missing. They discovered a pentagram in the attic of this house and the corpses of some of the cats which had been used for sacrifices. The house is across the alley from ours. I wondered which half the sacrifices occurred in. Yesterday a woman in my cohort read Prufrock from memory, and lines of it which I had remembered since undergrad nearly moved me to tears. Today I woke up and my left eye was sealed shut.
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