17 pages • 34 minutes read
Lorna Dee CervantesEmplumada
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1981A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Finding What Is Good
In the second stanza of “Emplumada,” the observer spots the pair of hummingbirds clinging to one another with fierce purpose, “to find what is good, what is / given to them to find” (Lines 13-14). What is good? One can surmise that for a hummingbird, sex is probably good, as is food. To that end, the season itself is something that is good, for both its comparatively clement weather and its floral bounty: “Flowers / born when the weather was good” (Lines 7-8) provide plenty of food.
The birds can only find, however, that which is given them. Beyond a nest, perhaps, birds do not produce things. They must seek and retrieve that which will keep them alive. It’s hard work. It takes up the whole day. Eventually, flowers die, making food more scarce and harder to find. Hummingbirds do not mate for life, or even twice, so the work of finding someone to mate with is never done. The act of finding something good, for a hummingbird, occurs through the arduous process of looking very hard all the time. Deliverance from this constant search comes in the solace of taking to the air, in wind-powered mobility, or so the observer imagines.
The observer might imagine, too, what it’s like to share the perspective of the hummingbird. Would it be easier to “find what is good” (Line 13) from a loftier perch than where she is, on the solid ground with the dying snapdragons? Surely, the options open up to seize upon “what is / given [her] to find” (Line 13-14) if her view expanded to above the roofline. To be “feathered,” then, would allow her to see more that was good, and take it for herself.
The Ars Poetica Is a Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson wrote, “’Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” and so made her contribution to the rich and varied use of avian imagery in poetry. It’s easy to see why poets are so drawn to feathered creatures. They fly (many of them), for one thing, without the use of complicated machinery. Also (although this fact has only recently been verified in scientific circles), they are dinosaurs. All by themselves, they provide ample grist for the poetic imagination.
The invention of the quill pen—made from the molted feather of a large bird—cemented forever the association of the literary arts with the avian. “Emplumada,” with its double meaning of feathered and pen flourish, clues the reader in right away that this poem may be speaking of birds, but it is also a meditation on poetry: the Ars Poetica is a thing with feathers.
The question arises, if the hummingbirds are to be associated with the poets, then it can also be said that poets are “warriors / distancing themselves from history” (Lines 14-15). There is pleasure in making art out of language, just as it must be pleasurable to fly; it is reasonable to think that the poet can find peace—and freedom—in language, as the birds are presumed to find peace in the air. A poet, or any writer, can create new worlds into which she may escape, simply by exercising her skills.
Poetry, then, is a way to fly, fly away, as well as to bear witness on the ground. The poem embraces both perspectives. In the past tense of the first stanza, the poet employs dactylic meter (falling rhythm) to express the despair that comes with endings. It is a frank, specific, and emotional look at the fade of youth and, ultimately, death. In the second stanza, the poet lifts the reader’s eye from the flower to the fence line and the peaches, before taking the gaze more upward still to the hummingbirds (and beyond). As a meditation on poetry, the poem expresses a goal (and hope) common to many poets, that the language will take flight and take the poet with it.
Warriors Distant from History
Warrior is a word and concept familiar to many cultures. In English, the word dates back to the 14th century. Arguably more poetic than the word soldier, its meaning is simple: One who wages war. History also dates from the 14th century, and, according to Online Etymology Dictionary, means “relation of incidents.” The definition is in the word itself: History is a story.
The hummingbirds of “Emplumada”—“warriors” (Line 14)— keep their distance from the story below. Cervantes speaks candidly about the inspiration for her work—growing up Chicana and Native American in California, and growing up poor. Cervantes illustrates her vision of her history through her poems, which is a history that cannot exist separately from the histories that come before it and continue to play out. Cultural histories, gendered histories, and political and economic histories clash and intersect and stagnate as the speaker of “Emplumada” tells her story of snapdragons and peaches and hummingbirds.
The hummingbirds are “warriors” (Line 14) for themselves. They battle for no cause other than their own survival and for ecosystem in which their cooperation is not optional. They cannot escape the world and its histories, but they can take wing and distance themselves from it; they can gain perspective, without abandoning their impetus to fight and love and forage as if their lives depended on it.
