Sketches A Bird, Now Extinct Poem Comparison

Human and nature have a mutual relationship. Thank to nature, human get food and other resources that are necessary for their existence. Human gradually found ways to improve nature to serve their purposes. However, due to the greed of human, nature has been destroyed at a steady speed. People now cut down trees, dispose waste and smoke into the environment, capture animals to extinction for their benefits. There have been a lot of calls for respecting and protecting nature. The poems “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct” by David Wagoner and “Moss Gathering”, by Theodore Roethke in A Book of Luminous Thing, do a good job representing this in their poems. They are similar in the way that they involve both human and
nature. However, while the man in “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct” shows his selflessness towards nature, the speaker in “Moss Gathering” expresses his remorse due to his destructive action to nature.
In both poems, humans are the ones who cause devastation for nature.
In the poem by David Wagoner, nature is indicated through the “ivory-billed woodpecker, as big as a crow”. The poor bird is the target of so- called “good intentions” as the poet states: “Must gather their flocks around them with a rifle. And make them live forever inside books”. To serve the scientific aim, the bird was shot at its wing and then captured. It was deprived from its own freedom. That is why it “began to cry like a baby”. The bird tried to be set free with its relentless efforts “wailing and squealing”. The call of nature, of freedom continuously urged it to escape from its piteous situation as described in the poem: “And the bird clinging beside a hole in the wall. Clear through to already-splintered weatherboards. And the sky beyond. While he tied one of its legs. To a table leg, it started wailing again.” The hunter witnessed all the painfulness that the pathetic animal was suffering, but he did nothing and ignored. He only wanted to preserve the eternal image of the bird to “make them live forever inside books”. He just wanted to keeps it alive in mind, not in
reality.
In “Moss Gathering”, the nature is shown through the moss. Moss is small vegetation that hardly anyone notices its importance. However, moss plays a major part in the decay of natural matter in food chain. In this way, other plants, animal and humans can get nutrition. Though it is at the bottom of the chain, its meaning to nature is not humble at all. As conveyed in the poem, moss is “flesh from the living planet”. Moreover, the poet writes: “The crumbling small hollow sticks on the underside mixed with roots, and wintergreen berries and leaves still stuck to the top”, which means that there are other living beings dependable on the moss. Nonetheless, when people gather moss, they unintentionally destroy other organisms as well.
Furthermore, both poems reveal that nature is devastated and then become the past that no longer to be there. In “The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct” after the death of the bird, its species will only exist in books and pictures. People will never have the chance to gaze at their beauty. Similarly, in “Moss Gathering”, the lines “And lift up a patch, dark-green, the kind for lining cemetery baskets, Thick and cushiony, like an old-fashioned doormat” shows that the moss is implied as the bygone days. Like other creatures that have been extinct, more and more animals and plants will gradually vanish due to exploitation of humans. Both poets try to send this message to readers.
Though David and Theodore talk about human destruction to nature, each speaker in their poems takes a different stance to nature.
In the first poem, the hunter showed no sympathy for the bird he had captured. Despite all of its mournful cries, its vain attempts to free back to nature, he was indifferent and apathetic. He only concentrated on his sole purpose “dew and tinted on fine vellum”. The theory of the bird grabbed more his attention than the will and emotion of the actual bird. Though in the last sentence, the speaker showed some empathy for the bird: “He watched it die, he said, with great regret.” How ironic! He sat there and “watched it die”. The poet uses the word “watch” to show the satire on the speaker’s “regret”. Was he regret because he kept the bird as his prisoner and caused its passing or was he remorseful since he lost his
specimen?
On the contrary, the speaker in “Moss Gathering” is thoughtful. He is sensitive and considerate over nature. The author uses the lines: “But something always went out of me when I dug loose those carpets, Of green, or plunged to my elbows in the spongy yellowish moss of the marshes: And afterwards I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road, As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland” to show that the speaker acknowledged his wrongdoings. He was aware of the importance of the moss to nature because it was the “flesh from living planet”. That is why he felt guilty and fearful due to his harming “As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.” He showed a deep sorrow for what he had done.
Thanks to both poems, we are awaken from the illusion of our separateness with nature. Humans now take advantage of nature without seeing the repercussions of our actions. We do not carry the knowledge that if we upset the balance between nature and our modern way of life, we essentially create a rift in the balance that holds our world together. “Nature is the supreme cradle of life, and must be protected and treated with highest respect and care” (Bryant McGill).
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