| I ended yesterday’s post with this: “You won’t believe what I have come across. My upcoming posts will most def cause us all to rethink, reevaluate, and redefine the meaning of ‘March madness” – so let’s get going! One poem I shared in the post was "After all Birds have been investigated and laid aside," and at some point, I Googled-searched something about the poem. I can’t remember if I just put in the title or some question with the title, but oh boy, I was ill prepared to take on what I uncovered. |  |
Usually, when I search a Dickinson poem, I receive a number of links to sites which include the poem. This time, though, Google offered up a peculiar smorgasbord of sites dealing with conspiracy theories, the bird surveillance crisis in America, drones replicated as birds spying on Americans, and the postulate that birds aren’t real – and all of this was peppered with sites with Dickinson’s poem.
Are all y’all familiar with this crisis and the fact that “birds aren’t real”? Looks like once again I’m late to the party! Hmm…I”ve always wondered why a sizable committee of vultures has gathered at dusk in the pines out back – and I’ve always suspected they were watching me. It all makes sense now!
(By the way, a group of vultures is called a committee, venue, or volt when resting, a kettle when flying in formation, and a wake when feeding together at a carcass.)
(By the way, a group of vultures is called a committee, venue, or volt when resting, a kettle when flying in formation, and a wake when feeding together at a carcass.)
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I found this info, which seems to encapsulate the story:
“In 2017 a twenty-year-old English major at the University of Memphis invented a satire of conspiracy theories. You know, a joke. It became so popular that apparently some conspiracy addicts are taking it seriously. You see, in the 1950s the CIA decided to poison all the birds—the last one died in 2001—and replace them with drones that spy on us with video cameras. JFK was killed because he refused to go along with this evil scheme. The kid who came up with this has turned it into a money-maker, with a web site where he sells tee shirts and other ‘birds aren’t real’ promotional items.”
I even found an article in Newsweek about all of this, HERE.
Back to Dickinson’s poem. I spoke yesterday of her use of the word “March,” and how the word implies both the month and the advance of a force – with, in this case, the Bluebird as the leader. Interestingly, in the poem “The Birds begun at Four o’clock,” birds create “A music numerous as space,” and Dickinson referred to the assemblage as a force (line 5: “I could not count their Force”).
What a wonderful ode to the grit and determination of the Bluebird is this poem! In March, she heralds the changing of the season – “competing with the Wind” (this calls to mind “Nevertheless, she persisted”) – and as “Summer cleaves away,” she provides an “Elegy of Integrity.”
I’ll have more on this poem tomorrow.
“In 2017 a twenty-year-old English major at the University of Memphis invented a satire of conspiracy theories. You know, a joke. It became so popular that apparently some conspiracy addicts are taking it seriously. You see, in the 1950s the CIA decided to poison all the birds—the last one died in 2001—and replace them with drones that spy on us with video cameras. JFK was killed because he refused to go along with this evil scheme. The kid who came up with this has turned it into a money-maker, with a web site where he sells tee shirts and other ‘birds aren’t real’ promotional items.”
I even found an article in Newsweek about all of this, HERE.
Back to Dickinson’s poem. I spoke yesterday of her use of the word “March,” and how the word implies both the month and the advance of a force – with, in this case, the Bluebird as the leader. Interestingly, in the poem “The Birds begun at Four o’clock,” birds create “A music numerous as space,” and Dickinson referred to the assemblage as a force (line 5: “I could not count their Force”).
What a wonderful ode to the grit and determination of the Bluebird is this poem! In March, she heralds the changing of the season – “competing with the Wind” (this calls to mind “Nevertheless, she persisted”) – and as “Summer cleaves away,” she provides an “Elegy of Integrity.”
I’ll have more on this poem tomorrow.
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