Birdlandia

Have you ever seen the show “Portlandia”?  It has been described thusly:

“Portlandia is an absurdist, satirical love letter to Pacific Northwest hipster culture. The show's quirkiness is widely seen as a hyper-specific, cringe-inducing, yet affectionate feedback loop that exaggerates artisanal obsessions, progressive politics, and earnest, do-it-yourself lifestyles.”

If you’ve never seen it, take a look below at two short “hyper-specific, cringe-inducing” scenes.  The first is one of my favorites, “Colin the Chicken,” where a couple has a few questions about the heritage breed, woodland-raised chicken they are considering ordering for dinner. The second is about the “artisan knots trend” featured in an article in the Sunday Times.

Below:  Click on the images to view "Colin the Chicken" and "The Knot Store."

And what does “Portlandia” have to do with Emily Dickinson?  Well, I have a site to share today that epitomizes the depiction of the show at the start of this post.  The site is called “Dickinson’s Birds,” but Imma call it “Birdlandia.”

Here is some background:  After exploring Dickinson’s range of poems with “squirrel” (15) and “drey” (0), I moved on yesterday to  consider her works which include the words “bird” (over 300) and “nest” (20).  Today I thought I’d pass along “Birdlandia” (i.e., the “Dickinson’s Birds”), an interesting but strange endeavor to be sure, one that embodies the quirkiness of “Portlandia” as described above.  Without a doubt, it is “hyper-specific,” concentrating solely on the birds mentioned in the poetry of Emily Dickinson, plus the site’s narratives communicating the project, their process, and their people are “cringe-inducing,” awkwardly brilliant at times but often turning the venture into a caricature a la an exaggerated scene from “Portlandia.”

Today, I’ll share some of the project's interesting features, and then tomorrow, I'll move on to some of the hyperbolic weirdness in the site's descriptions of itself.

The “scope” of the project, i.e., the “hyper-specific” focus referenced above, covers “230 poems, represented by 350 manuscript versions, composed by Dickinson and marked by the presence of birds.”  The inventory of the poems is HERE, and then each poem has its own page, each with a similar format.  Three examples shown below for three poems I chose intentionally:

1.  "A Bird came down the Walk" – a poem of “Unnamed Birds" (Click HERE)
2.  "A Route of Evanescence "– a poem in which Dickinson never names the bird described, a hummingbird (Click HERE)
3.  "The Jay his Castanet has struck" – a poem where Dickinson name's its focus in the opening line, a Jay (Click HERE)

Note that the pages/poems about specific birds include audio files from which you can hear the birds’ calls.

The site also includes a cross-referenced inventory of the birds that are featured, HERE.  Related to the two poems above about specific birds – the page which includes link to the audio file for the hummingbird is HERE; for the jay is HERE.

These features of “Dickinson’s Birds” presented above are – for you Boomers out there – pretty keen (or swell)!  For Gen X:  They’re rad and tubular!  For Millennials:  Dope and sweet!  For Gen Z and Gen Alpha:  The pages are fire!  Lit! 
​
I’ll get the “Birdlandia” aspects of the projects tomorrow!  ; )