John Spiegel Reviews John James's Extinction Song

While James has always been interested in nature through his work, both visual and linguistic, Extinction Song is a more focused take on ecopoetics. John James’s new chapbook Extinction Song, and its relationship to his past work, are better understood by breaking the title down into its two parts: “Extinction” and “Song.”

Consider “extinction.” The book is an indictment of the state of the natural world rather than an observation. As it states in the poem “Future Perfect,” “…there is no Mars, no / plan B. No second-chance / planet to escape to.” James is critical of the state of things, of future life on our planet, of resources being consumed and abused. The poem goes on to say there is only “…your foot / on the ground and the ground / beneath it.” This book is characterized by anger and frustration, as well as love and an earnest desire for improvement. This might seem similar to the abundance of ecopoetry we see, but what sets it apart is James’s emphasis on the perspective of the speaker rather than the reader. It reads not as a self-righteous accusation, but an introspection into the speaker’s anger and, at times, awe. 

We feel this anger in the poem “Pastoral,” whose title alludes to the historic genre and its eco-centric roots. The poem shows us a “[tax] form that needs fixing” and calls it a “flimsy piece of former wood.” These descriptions bridge the gap between the natural and the economic. This connection is emphasized by the poem’s repeating images of a peach tree in the snow; the repeated image functions as a backdrop for the subsequent stanzas. We dwell on the natural image, a symbol of life, as we are brought back into the artificial or industrial world: 

it serves as background 

for columns of numbers 

that signify financial decline. 

A real and imminent catastrophe. 

The poem references this as the “precarious / buoyancy of late empire.” While this industry is the toxin to the planet, many see it as a source of meaning. This is the extinction the title references and is reminiscent of the “Machine in the Garden” à la Leo Marx. Yes, it is the extinction of life and the natural world, but it is also the extinction of responsibility, the extinction of a perspective and the idea that we are part of this world, that we have responsibility to things and people other than ourselves. James seems to say that If the consequences of our actions ripple outward, then we do not belong to ourselves.

This isn’t necessarily anything new. So what does James do to make his work specific to him? Much ecopoetry reads as an attack on a power structure and leaves the reader wondering who the intended audience is. James avoids this attitude in his work, and instead contrasts the universal with the personal. James has always had an unflinching eye for dailyness in his work, and things are no different here. And in a poetry landscape inundated with eco-anxiety, this lyrical style becomes a breath of fresh air. Yes, we are concerned about the state of the world, but James makes such large concerns feel deeply human and intimate. 

“The Field Which Had Been a Meadow Once” juggles these ideas. It is a work that focuses on memory and thought in all of its forms, natural and cultivated. It’s a poem about scraping away life, as the title implies, where ash and tree stumps remain, but we also see life breaking through, breaking through concrete squares and gutters. Throughout the book, James’s knack for personal, focused imagery works its way through as well. Language about family, daily life, taking a walk—the Personal breaks through the narrative in a similar way to life breaking through the sterile. The poems show us the intimacy of “Friday, / early, and my son / is newly born,” and later “My neighbor shaves / a bristlecone pine toppled / in the morning heat.” When these disparate ideas come together, James is at his best. We see an infinite problem on an individual scale, which is the only way one can process something so global, so all encompassing:

In the sling, I hoist 

the baby, the nineteen pounds of her, 

so recently within the liquid 

belly of her mother. The world 

revolves. I hold her in the sun. 

James’s work reminds us that, while actions might be motivated by a bottom line or increased efficiency, it is ultimately about people. 

The second word of the title, “Song,” is a reminder of James’s mastery of the lyric and sonic textures he weaves into his work. Some of his works demonstrate his control, as in “Action in the Infinitive,” a poem constructed with couplets and anaphora which immediately catches the eye and the ear. Each line begins with an infinitive while using words in multiple parts of speech. “To choir the honey…to anchor our vision…to hallow the wolf…to grenade the cicadas, to silo the sound.” These lines are immediately approachable in structure, but invite multiple readings, new ways to see language opening up each time the reader comes back to it. 

Less noticeable is the poem’s use of meter and rhyme—end rhymes bridge the gap between stanzas (foam / roots / storm / gas / loam); moreso, the poem’s consistent use of ambibrachs gives the poem a musical quality. As the book’s title implies, it reads like a song, but one that surprises the reader. Or like a chorus that develops through each refrain. Each time I read this poem, I couldn’t help but smile as I noticed something I had missed or as I read pauses and pronunciations differently. 

The poem “Pastoral” also utilizes traditional poetic mechanics, adding to its song-like impression. The poem begins with the couplet that serves as the refrain for the piece: “A peach tree in the snow. / A black cloud in a peach tree in the snow.” These lines are repeated throughout and added to, something like what happens in a pantoum. In this way, the peach tree is always in the background of the piece, but so is the black cloud; we see nature and an omen against it, the poetic and the portentous.

Extinction Song may be about environmental issues, but John James’s focus on the self is what stands out and lasts. What control does a father have over his children and the world they inhabit? And aren’t we all children of this world? The response is a song that is as much an ode as it is an elegy, celebrating what is, mourning what was, and yearning for what might be.

John Spiegel is an English teacher in Fairborn, Ohio where he lives with his wife and three daughters. He received his MFA from Miami University. His debut manuscript In Bloom (2024) is available through Finishing Line Press. He owns a fountain pen he does not use and is learning to wire bonsai trees. He is currently reading Fish Wife by Alysse Kathleen McCanna, Ingram by Louis C.K., and rereading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.