coll. - Commonwealth of Wings

Commonwealth of WingsAlso by Pamela AlexanderNavigable WaterwaysPamela Alexander

An OrnithologicalBiographyBased on the Life ofJohn James Audubon WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Published by University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755 1991 by Pamela Alexander All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1 CIP data appear at the end of the book I would like to thank the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College for a fellowship, during which I began this project. I am also grateful to those who provided helpful comments on the manuscript, along with encouragement: Wendy Battin, John G. Case, Martha Collins, Laura Fargas, Jorie Graham, Linda Gregerson, Jay Klokker and Gary J. Quigley. This book is for my mother and father. Sight appeared in Field as Audubon Remembers American Falls; At Coueron.

My First Gun, Inventory. Journal, and Aboard the Ripley in Margin as Audubon at 13, as Revolution Begins in France, Audubon Takes Inventory, and Audubon aboard the Ripley; Letter to Victor, Losses (2), and Reprise (1) in Michigan Quarterly Review; Arrangements, My Ornithology Proceeds, I Imagine Thee, and Return appeared in Shankpainter 30. Imagine a landscape wholly American, trees, flowers, grass, even the tints of the sky and the waters, quickened with a life that is real, peculiar, trans-Atlantic. It is a real and palpable vision of the New World, with its atmosphere, its imposing vegetation, and its tribes that know not the yoke of man. On twigs, branches, bits of shore, copied by the brush with the strictest fidelity, sport the feathered races, in the size of life, each in its particular attitude, its individuality and peculiarities. The sun shines athwart the clearing in the woods; the swan floats suspended between a cloudless sky and a glittering wave; strange and majestic figures keep pace with the sun.

Philarete-Chasles, of Audubons work, 1826

Commonwealth of Wings I First met the light and shook it Aux Cayes, my mother la crole Rabin who dies. I am one. Father finds for me a stepmother and they together a half sister, Muguet called Rosa, & he is away. In his fields I cut pieces of cane for me & Rosa to suck. I am Jean.

My father marin learned this language in an English prison. Later I count my days from France sometimes, this place Saint Domingue maman hard to remember. New world it is, my warm island, wilderness churning beyond the lines of coffee plants. The woman names me again Fougre you would say Fern, names are charms and we need them. There are places I cannot take the little one. Edges of things are dangerouswhere sea and land meet, or field and forest, things get loose from their names.

On the edge of my family I call myself LaFort my first self before I knew French or african or english words. I saw red birds sign themselves in air before they sang, flourishing. Parroquet. Trogon. She carried me outdoors & I reached for them, my stepmother said.

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