 | By Cornelia Channing Editorial Assistant, Sunday Opinion |
A few years ago, my friend Catherine gave me a copy of Mark Doty's "Still Life With Oysters and Lemon" and insisted that I read it at once. It is a wisp of a book — only about 80 pages long — and so I did as I was told, consuming it in one gulp at my kitchen table. |
The book is about a lot of things: grief, poetry, the passage of time, our attachment to physical objects and the death of Doty's partner from AIDS. But it is also, in a more straightforward way, a book about still-life oil paintings. |
Until that time, I'd never thought much about still lifes. But the tenderness and attention with which Doty lavishes them made me want to care about them as he did. I loved that he could look at a painting of a vase of flowers and see a representation of mortality, feel "the energy and life of the painting's will." I wanted to see and feel those things, too. |
To this day, when visiting a museum, I linger in front of each still life, searching for the pulse, the moving awareness of an intimate perspective frozen in time. Sometimes I find it. Sometimes I don't. But I'm grateful for the ways Doty attuned me to its possibility. |
This is the power of great writers: to love something so fiercely and express that love so specifically that they make you love it, too — or, at the very least, invite you to experience the thing in a new and deeper way. |
I felt that power when, a few months ago, I began reading Christian Cooper's forthcoming book "Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World." |
Cooper, a nature writer and lifelong birder, was thrust into fame in 2020 when a video of his racist encounter with a dog walker in Central Park went viral online. |
In an essay adapted from the book, Cooper reflects on a lot of things: how the park incident shifted the trajectory of his life, his passion for nature, how he found refuge in the outdoors as a queer Black kid and why many Black people still don't feel fully comfortable in public spaces. But it is also, in a more straightforward way, an essay about birds. |
And Cooper loves birds. He loves their variety, their bright plumage, the astonishing variety of their musical calls. He loves their power for flight and the way they can "launch themselves effortlessly up into a medium with no boundaries while we remain earthbound." He loves the way they inspire us to dream of a world beyond our reach. |
He loves them so fiercely and so specifically that, through his writing, he will make you want to love them as well. Birds, like still lifes, were something that I had never thought too much about. Some birds are beautiful, sure, and I like hearing their songs in the early morning. But that's it. |
Working on this essay, though, made me want to pick up a pair of binoculars. A few days before it was published, I ordered a pair online. I plan to take them to Central Park in the early morning someday soon and look up. |
I can't be sure that I will see the same things Cooper does when he looks into a tree canopy. I can't be sure that I will "gaze skyward to the birds and see what it means to be free." But I sincerely hope I do. |
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