How Does a Poet Describe an Animal?

    Compare a Great Horned Owl on Long Island with a look-alike animal. Choose the "look-alike" animal from a different group of animals. For this comparison choose a mammal. The owl is a bird. What mammal has long ear tufts that look like  the Great Horned Owl’s ear tufts?  The Lynx.  

    This is the cat Mary Oliver, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning poet, chooses for her poem, "Owl in the Black Oaks." This is probably the Great Horned Owl although she does not give the name. With her clues she gives her audience the fun of discovering it is the Great Horned Owl.   

   For this Oliver takes advantage of another similarity. The eyes of both animals are yellow. Oliver could have just written  "most of all, his eyes were yellow." But the poet wants to make the poem strikingly interesting. She accomplishes this by using another word which everybody knows -- "lamps." She uses "lamps" in place of  "yellow." With "lamps," she gives people an electrifying combination of words -- "lamps of his eyes."

   She has created a dynamic metaphor. A metaphor is a comparison. The author compares a subject with something different to gain interest in the poem. Here Oliver compares yellow eyes with lamps which, of course, have a yellow light or flame. It is powerfully effective. With this metaphor a person more than learns the fact. Instead,  he or she experiences  feelings of excitement in discovering the fact that the owl has yellow eyes. Feelings are what a poet wants to evoke with her or his poetry.

  Oliver uses another similarity. The thickness of the Lynx’s neck resembles the thickness, due to the feathers, of the owl’s neck. This, with the cat-like appearance of both animals’ faces, gives people a delightful line, "and left behind/ his face, his thick neck."

  The combination of words, "lamps of his eyes," excerpted here occurs at the beginning of the poem. This excerpt functions as a poem in itself, which is often the case. A poem is identified by having a Lead, Build-up and ending which is a Kicker or a Soft-shoe Tap depending on whether it is dramatic or quiet. Here the Lead is "If a lynx, that plush fellow,/Climbed down. . ." The Build-up extends from "a/ tree. . ." to "the owl."  The ending is a kicker -- "the very owl/ who haunts these trees. . ."

from "Owl in the Black Oaks:"

If a lynx, that plush fellow, Lead

climbed down a       Build-up

tree and left behind

his face, his thick neck,

and, most of all, the lamps of his eyes,

there you would have it—

the owl,

the very owl

who haunts these trees... Kicker

Mary Oliver

"White Pine"

Harcourt Brace & Company  1994

  Using excepts to teach poetry writing gives the teacher the opportunity to teach about the poet and the language she or he uses -- in this case, Mary Oliver. Because of young people’s general interest in nature, writing about animals is a helpful vehicle for teaching poetry writing skills. Oliver’s work is an accessible and rich resource for the teacher because most of her poetry is about nature. She describes animals, plants and scenery with language that students can see in their imagination and which can influence their writing. What  we call "visual" langrage. Oliver writes a lot of  poetry about species, an abundance of these being animals enjoyed on Long Island: "Bluefish," "The Horseshoe Crab," ‘Pipefish," "The Deer," "Opossum." "Crows," "Mockingbirds," "Marsh Hawks," "The Kingfisher," "Catbird," "Goldfinches" and generically, " "The Terns," "Some Herons," "Mussels," "Looking for Snakes," "Moles," etc. Animals the students can write about.

  Because of her popularity, Mary Oliver’s books are commonly found on book store and public library shelves: "Owls and Other Fantasies." "House of Light," "Twelve Moons," "New and Selected Poems," "American Primitive," etc.