Ariel Magin Week 4: Pick A Poet Blog #1 What's Up With Eric Dolphy and Sparrows?

The poet I chose to use for this project goes by the name of John Murillo. A man of African-American and Mexican descent, Murillo has been writing poetry for some time, garnering many accolades and recognition. The specific poem I review for this week of Pick A Poet is “Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds,” which proved to be quite an interesting, yet strange read. 

This poem at first glance seems to be attributed to the late, great saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist, Eric Dolphy. It has some correlation as the story tends to symbolically circulate around the sparrow and all it represented for the narrator, himself. He recounts spotting two sparrows, one aggressively flying above him and another getting caught in a car door. He doesn’t help as he is “not indifferent, exactly. But with things to do.” This theme continues throughout the rest of the poem. On the same street, at a different time, the narrator saw two men struggling and heard someone say “brother” or “ help” and didn’t break his stride. The narrator details certain events in his life traumatic and inconsequential and how he didn’t act on it, yet chose to remain idle. He recounts his love affairs all ending due to his inability to love them back. He witnessed his mother and father fight in broad daylight and when someone intervened, watched his father strike him. Not once did he step in. The narrator at this point in the poem can be seen for what he is. He does nothing extraordinarily good or bad. He just is. He claims to not be indifferent, yet nothing phases him. He goes through life with an attitude of not caring, maybe to protect himself or maybe because he is devoid of emotion. I believe it is the former. The narrator is the product of a bad childhood. This becomes apparent after he divulges that “when I left my parents’ house, I never looked back.” Just as he did with the birds, with the men, with his lovers, with everything. 

Birds, primarily sparrows, seem to comfort him. His fascination with Eric Dolphy being able to transcribe the calls of certain species of birds already raises some alarm bells. The character of this poem is not someone I would like to meet. He is neither here nor there. He is merely a spectator, allowing the events of his life to unfold with no say in it. I’ve never read, seen, met, or heard about someone so passive before. The style of writing in this poem isn’t conventionally structured. It’s supposed to show the thought process of a complex person and thought processes are abstract and rarely structured. It almost felt conversational, but not in the sense that he was telling me a story, but in the sense that I was inside his head. I will definitely read over this poem again as it seems like the type where a single detail that was missed before can totally change the reader’s impression of the story.