John Spiegel Reviews The Bold News of Birdcalls by Edward Morin

Housing for Wrens, Morin’s 2016 chapbook, along with over a dozen other publications, paved the way for Morin’s first full length manuscript in over a decade. Before even entering into the poetry of this book, one sees the dedication to poetry and its community. This is a struggle that all writers deal with, I think: do we find more pleasure in our writing or in the recognition of it? Is it better to be selfish and focus on our work or to be selfless and promote others’? Do we really find pleasure in the process of the work? And if so, why do we feel the need to send our work out for publication, to share it with others, if we should be fully satisfied within the work itself? As someone who’s struggling through this dichotomy a lot recently, I appreciate Morin’s patience. His joy truly does seem to be in the poem itself, something I can’t confidently say about myself. Beyond that, his support for the poetry community is one that comes with maturity, having a broader view of art and its place in our lives.

Richard Tillinghast calls Morin a poet of place, alongside the likes of Fred Wah or Philip Levine, but to me, Morin at his core is a storyteller. Yes, this is a book about birds and nature and location as the title implies, but Morin weaves these elements subtly into the work. They are in the background of the story, not the story itself. His poem “A Bird Story,” for example, begins:

As boys with slingshots in the U.P.,
my pals and I roamed the woods shooting
rocks at small things that moved. After missing
scores of chipmunks and swallows, they wanted
shotguns to bag ducks and grouse. I killed
a cedar waxwing, then swore off hunting (39)

We see nature and setting here, but all through the eyes of the narrator, through the context of the story. And as the context changes, so too does our understanding of what we witness; as any novelist will tell you, point of view, in part, dictates our perception of the events of a novel. Consider, by contrast, the poem “Aerial Combat”:

A pair of robins build their third nest
of the summer in our climbing rosebush.
They’d abandoned one nest after a heavy
cowbird chick suffocated their offspring.
Squirrels ate the eggs in their second nest (57)

Our narrative voice shifts, as does the space around us, but the attentive eye is just as keen. We’re left with the impression that the world remains consistent while we change within it.

This book is certainly about place, but to Morin, place doesn’t simply mean a physical location. Place surpasses setting and encompasses characters. If we are part of the space around us, then it stands to reason that others are part of that space as well. Who we are is influenced by where we are from, certainly, but it is also those we are around and, likewise, those who surround us:

Rachel, who dislikes fishing, takes the stern;
sports-minded Jocelyn in the bow wants racing;
Leonard sits low in the middle, trolling
a weedless silver spoon as they dash off (49)

Morin has also laced his collection with a light-hearted humor. Even when discussing heavy topics, he has an unflinching positive outlook about things. Much of this is a result of his word choice. In addition to containing clear humorous lines, throughout the manuscript are several poems written in traditional verse stanzas. In some poetry, strict end-rhymes can come off as being a bit “sing-songy” or childish, if not traditional. Here, however, they create a clear, humorous tone, as in “Inauguration, 2005”:

What a bizarre security mania
commandeered the Avenue Pennsylvania
stuffed shirts marched in a victory parade
to flaunt the grandeur Cash had made.
The First Lady wore her ermine coat,
while George leered in an all-day gloat,
and corralled leftists yelled, “yo’ mama!”
Prime Time embraced this melodrama (60)

Morin is having a good time and it shows. Again, his joy seems to be in the work itself. The poem is the prize. In all honesty, it took me a moment to realize what I was reading; so much modern work has been about condensing language and hiding these more visible poetic moves. And perhaps it’s for those reasons that these poems felt utterly unique in the landscape of more modern poetry.

Morin’s humor doesn’t mean that he avoids topics of controversy or introspection; quite the opposite. Morin is critical of himself and of what he sees around him. We see an example of the former in his poem “Idiot,” a piece centered around coaching a baseball team. After calling an athlete “idiot,” the narrator remembers his own experience with name-calling:

I recalled how in the early grades
schoolmates taunted me with the name “moron,”
goading me to fight or try to get smart (51)

Another piece titled “Father Holtschneider Considers Dr. Normal Finkelstein’s Tenure” is an example of the latter. As its title implies, the poem recounts the details of a professor seeking tenure. Amidst scandal and conflict, in the middle of the piece, Morin reflects:

Why has controversy been the Catholic Church’s
middle name? We need charity just to keep
from killing one another. Frankly,
our board, administrators, and core
faculty are corporate DePaul;
adjuncts, “tenure tracks,” and grad assistants
just work here. I pray we all know our places. (63)

Humility is necessary when viewing the self, yes, but how does our humility affect our view of the world around us? To Morin, these questions are not so different from one another. They are extensions of the same philosophy. As we see ourselves differently, we see our surroundings differently. And as we reframe what goes on around us, we must also change our self-perception. We are the culmination of people and places; slowly, gradually, one piece at a time, we grow. We shift, move, readjust. We grow. We change who we are and so change who we’re around. We grow. We must.