Brooklyn to Middlebury Rural Realities

Author: Crystal Belle

A New Yorker connected to nature is like a farmer on the subway - hard to imagine. I was once again reminded of my deficient understanding of nature in my Modern Poetry seminar. As we attempted to analyze Robert Frost's "The Oven Bird," I could not help but acknowledge the fact that I had never heard of such a bird. Besides the pigeons along New York City streets and the three canaries my mom purchased from the local pet store, I was never really exposed to other types of birds. Thanks to Frost's naturalistic vision, I was able to discover the oven bird. Seeing the word "oven" juxtaposed with the word "bird" initially prompted me to think of baked chicken, or some other kind of fowl destined for the dinner table.
Our professor, Jay Parini, explained that one of his former students actually wrote a paper on how the bird represented a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. Truthfully, I am not exactly sure where the student was from - city or countryside. However, I would bet any amount of money that this student, like myself, originated from a city environment. Why you ask? It's simple. Most urban folks find it hard to truly connect to nature as a result of their metropolitan milieu. As a result, when reading a poem like "The Oven Bird," the city-oriented mind is more prone to stray from naturalistic ties, while the more rural mind can easily relate to and appreciate nature's importance in everyday life.
As other students in the course went on to explain the natural qualities of the poem, I could not help but envision roast chicken. Of the eight students in the course, I know that at least four of them happen to be from the New England area. Once again, I am left as the naughty New Yorker.
So I bet some of you are wondering what an oven bird really is. Well, I'll tell you. The oven bird gets its name from the unusual nest it builds. This odd-looking structure, made from mud and strengthened with fibers and grass, is shaped like an old-fashioned baking oven. Most notably, the oven bird is usually found in South America, preventing both me and ruralites from truly relating to such a creature.
The actual meaning behind Frost's poem is that this oven bird "makes the solid tree trunks sound again." This can be interpreted as a voice of mortality stressing the idea that the joys of spring and of life are short-lived. The bird's song serves as a reminder of the inevitability of the fleeting nature of life. In this respect, both ruralites and urbanites can relate to this poem, for despite our hometowns, we are all mortal human beings. So despite geographical distances, we all stand on common ground when faced with universal truths such as life and death.