My poem “Confusing Fall Warblers” as an Xtranormal Movie
December 22, 2010
For all my birding friends out there, who are preparing for the Christmas Bird Count, I thought I would share my poem, “Confusing Fall Warblers.”
The poem was inspired by Plate 52 in Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds, which bears the same title, and features all the bird names that appear in that plate in one poem.
I’ve also decided to try out Xtranormal — a fun text-to-movie application, which adds a curious dimension to the telling of the poem, which you can watch here:
Here is the poem as it appeared in the journal Isotope, Spring 2004:
Confusing Fall Warblers
(Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds, plate 52)
“You changed your name from Brown to Jones and mine from Brown to Blue” George Jones
Was it Hank Williams
she called the Nashville warbler,
or was it the black-throated blue?
Was it Wilson’s warbler
she heard in the bog up north
chattering chi chi chi chi chi chet chet?
Yellow-throat or orange-crowned,
from Tennessee, Connecticut, or
Canada, the prothonotary
clerks for the vireo from Philly,
who is neither lawyer nor warbler,
but is often mistaken–
Was it the hooded warbler
that startled her from the thicket,
or mourning warbler’s balancing notes
chirry chirry, chorry chorry,
that made her cock her head
to listen for its secret?
And tell me, tell me truly,
was it only
that sad country song
playing on the car radio
that made her cry?
–Scott Edward Anderson