Analysis of Poor Bird and The Butterfly

Both poems of Margaret Avison and P.K Page are common to the point of cliché in literary criticism to safely state that both were metafictional to a certain extent. The beauty and vividness of the language and patterning of lexical items employed and deployed make it imperative to acknowledge the rightfulness of both poets to fame and renown.

Romance is different from religion. The use of diction by Margaret Avison implies that the poet is writing a powerful prayer in pursuit of illumination and, absurdly, all the energy of the language is devoted to self-denial in an effort to touch base and come closer to the sun of knowledge. The characterization of the storm shows that Man remains weak, helpless and he must seek rescue from a stronger being by submitting himself without question to a power infinitely greater than him.

The thematic importance of romantic connotations and associations in P.K Page’s “Poor Bird” use of oxymoron with man’s passiveness, blindness, ignorance and hesitation that can’t be ignored. We are surely directed to see the type of the poet in the qualities of the sandpiper. The connection between the bird and the poet is continued through the focus on grains of sand.

The fact that the medium of the message is poetry can only serve to draw attention to the connections between both poets to the subjects of which both ladies write. In the case of P.K Page, we are lead to note the lightly comic references to the fussiness of the bird, running across the sands, ‘finical, awkward’. Bishop’s tone here suggests that she is only too familiar with these personality traits as she stands aware and knowing of her own character.

In the case of Margaret’s Avison recognition of, contact with and submission to the powe...

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...which reminds her of God and His ability to create, in her last stanza Page also meddles that occasionally and unexpectedly man is faced with God’s creation:

A painted fish like a work of art across his sight

reminds him of something he doesn’t know

that he has been seeking his whole long life—

something that may not even exist!

Poor bird, indeed! Poor dazed creature.

Here Page is not only mocks skeptics in her sarcasm but also pities them for not noticing what is clearly evident in the humans surrounding, so much so that it is embed in a human’s psyche. A human need not discover anything new but is rather merely “reminded” of something that has slipped through time wasted searching. Ultimately she is indicating that man is not actually searching, nor is he lost but quite frankly arrogant and his arrogance is what leads him to be in such a dazed state.