Hidden Farm Life in “Son of a Bird” https://ift.tt/1skQ8gP
I admit, Son of a Bird is the first of Nin Andrews’ poetry collections I’ve read, and it won’t be the last. Having also grown up on a farm, albeit half a world away, the contrast between the softness of playing with barn kittens and the ways not all of them lived to a mature age produces a familiar feeling of discomfort and tension. The cover picture could’ve been me, or one of my children, visiting relatives.
A farm is both a charming and a heartbreaking place. Death stalks every living thing on a farm. Whether from weather and crop cycles to the difficulty of raising farm animals, to kittens dumped, possibly thrown, out of passing cars onto the side of the road, loss is always present. Stress is raised with the contrast between the landscape, rolling hills, grazing cattle, and the harsh conditions under which flora, fauna, and humans try to coexist. When strangers remark how serene and simple farm life appears, it’s impossible for anyone who’s experienced rural life not to feel a sense of helplessness, guilt, or the frustration of not being seen or heard.
Andrews’ work demonstrates how multifaceted life on a farm is. From the outside, it can appear deceptively rudimentary, and Andrews painstakingly takes us inside these layers. Because the truth is, both the creatures, domestic and wild, and the children raised in that environment often experience and witness neglect and cruelty, both from people they rely on and from the vagaries of nature and farm life. Andrews deftly shows the practical and difficult underbelly that few people ask to see. In the section “A Lady, a Gentleman and Two Strange Birds,” the poetry begins with the lines,
“The past is gone and you can’t get it back,” my father always said.
But I want to tell him, you can still visit. The farmland is there, and
my mother’s shadow lingers in the doorway of the stone house.
The romance of an old stone-hewed house, on farmland, appearing tranquil but with her “mother’s shadow” which “lingers”; the reader is cued that there are old spirits that’ll be explored in Andrews’ writing. Later in this piece, Andrews explains that her mother found the black racers and rat snakes in the attic to be “better than the Orkin man at keeping the rodent population down.” Andrews talks about hearing the “swish-swish,” as a child, in the unseen space above her head at night. Never mind the presence of snakes audible above a child’s bed, few adults would be entirely comfortable with this daily living situation. There’s also the disgusting thought of what those snakes are there for: to feed. Andrews describes parents who are willfully oblivious to the normal fears of a small child, let alone adults capable of responding with any semblance of safety and compassion.
Andrews describes many incidents of being sick, accidents, and her mother’s insistence it’s preferable, enjoyable, that someone else raises her children. Her mother espouses they are to run wild, growing up like her beloved heifers. Andrews’ mother justifies her neglect by saying that her own children were stronger, better than other families, just like her “Ayrshire cows were healthier than the Holsteins on neighboring farms.” Andrews goes on to point out the litany of severe health crises and illnesses she suffered growing up. Her father is complicit. He reveals his understanding that their family life wasn’t as healthy as it should’ve been. In the section “Hired Hands” he gives Andrews a list of things she must not (voice) write about. This is also the section where he tells her,
“Above all, don’t mention your black nanny, or people will think
you’re a spoiled brat, a modern-day Scarlett O’Hara. Besides,
Miss Mary insisted she wasn’t black — or colored as the word was
then. She was part-Native American, part-white, and part-African.”
Andrews’ descriptions of Miss Mary make it clear that it was Miss Mary who mothered her. Through storytelling, Andrews describes the ways death and fear were ever present for her. Miss Mary’s care and protection appears to be one of the few safe constants that Andrews experiences. Andrews takes her time to grapple with her racist upbringing and how to write about Miss Mary with respect and honor. She converses with Miss Mary on the page. It is perhaps the discussion of this deeply difficult dynamic that places this poetry as definitely in the South.
The details about nature, the farm, the people, also speak to the setting. However, working with the complexity of a family, and a child, reliant on her black nanny cements this storytelling as southern. Andrews expresses her tentativeness around this part of her story. She shows gratitude for Miss Mary, owning the racism of her family in ways that feel like she’s willing to get on this tightrope for her nanny, just as Miss Mary was willing to protect and love her as an innocent child.
There are other aspects that arise in Andrews lyrical prose poems that are worth highlighting. Buddy, a farm hand, is shown to be illiterate. Nevertheless, he will go to war. It begs the question as to how he is supposed to survive a war without knowing how to read. While Andrews doesn’t say it explicitly, in today’s world it’s hard not to consider that, during that same period, wealthy young men at ivied universities were spared the trouble of war if they had so much as a bone spur.
Farms are places that most people see as they drive through the countryside on the way to somewhere else. Horses or cattle may be turned out in the paddocks. Barn buildings surround farmhouses. Perhaps silos are sighted by children in the backs of cars as they look up from their devices. Andrews creates, with her prose poetry, window upon window to glimpse through and see into these lives more closely. She does this by sharing details about her own life in a way that’s poignant without falling into sentimental nostalgia. Andrews evokes pathos with her work by showing the effects of her mother’s cold pragmatism and the damage this can do to children. Her poetry is an act of beauty and bravery and draws attention, for a moment, to the difficulty of a life built on something as tenuous as a farm.
POETRY Son of a Bird By Nin Andrews
Etruscan Press
Published April 29, 2025
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