Marc Beaudin’s
Life List: Poems
Reviewed by Johnathan Hettinger
Riverfeet Press, 2021
Softcover: $16.00
The world is quite a bit quieter now than it was 50 years ago. In North America alone, bird populations have dropped by more than 3 billion since 1970, and many of those losses are the most familiar birds, the most familiar songs, whether it be sparrows, blackbirds, warblers, finches or meadowlarks.
In his latest book, Life List, Montana poet Marc Beaudin explores what the loss of those songs means, not just for the planet, but for the feeling of fulfillment bird songs bring to each of our daily lives.
Modeled after a birder’s "life list," or a collection of every bird they’ve ever seen, Beaudin’s poems are about birds he’s seen, the memories they evoke, how birds can change throughout our lives, and why they add to the diverse experience that is life.
More than anything, Life List demonstrates the cognitive dissonance required to wake up each day and continue to turn up the thermostat, start the car, sit in an office, go to the grocery store, cook dinner, flip on a movie. . . In addition, Life List captures the absurdity of living in a time of climate crisis and an extinction crisis, and the intrusive thoughts such a reality can bring. Poems like “Carbon,” about the brown pelican, and “Meanwhile,” about the American white pelican, harken the reader to dead Whitebark pine trees, dead sea turtles, and the bombing of children in an endless middle eastern war. Beaudin reminds us of the fact that even as birds are separate from us, they exist side-by-side with us, and that our daily actions are driving them to death, leading to the loss of the songs that mean so much—not only to Beaudin, but to all of us.
Part of such dissonance likely comes from Beaudin’s chosen place of finishing the book: the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, a nearly 1 million acre wilderness area just north of Yellowstone National Park that provides breathing room for the grizzly bears, wolverines, Canada lynx, and other animals that call the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem home. Beaudin served as artist-in-residence there and finished the collection in a cabin in the wilderness.
Living in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—taking a trip to the park and seeing a grizzly bear, a wolf, and a bison in the last place in the Continental U.S. that they all coexist—is incredible, yet for Beaudin it can also evoke a feeling of intense guilt and loss of what once was. Beaudin captures this feeling in “25 Bears”, a poem about the mystery that the presence of 25 remaining grizzly bears in Montana’s Yaak Valley provides and the loss he would feel if they were to be extirpated.
The taste of this coffee
on the cabin’s deck high above
the voicings of the Yaak River
& all the rest of it
made richer by the fact of those
remaining 25 grizzlies
somewhere
out there living
their perfect ursine lives
But Life List is more than just a eulogy, and you don’t need to be a birder or live near the world’s first national park to appreciate Beaudin’s work. Beaudin refers to himself as a “laissez-faire” birder, and once told me in conversation, “Seeing a bird can take you back to where you first saw that bird. It pulls you back instantly. It’s like hearing a song.”
Beaudin says birds want to be in his poems, but recognizes that birds mean different things to different people, and that birds change with us throughout our life. The collection is also a celebration of seemingly insignificant moments: from the thrill of spring's first robin to a sharp axe and a cold beer; from the eruption of a loon call to watching a sandpiper on a beach; from the popcorning of tires on a gravel road to the silence of mountains and the cackle of magpies. As an added treat, the poems are also complemented by monotypes from Storrs Bishop, a Livingston-based artist. Made from black-and-white ink on a printing press, the images provide an interpretation of the poems and pictures of the bird that fits with the moments captured in Beaudin's poetry.
Ultimately, Life List is both a celebration of what it means to see a bird, as well as an eulogy for the world that once was and the role we continue to play in its destruction. Beaudin, an author of several poetry books, says Life List is the best work he’s done in his life. The weight of the subject matter shows the time put into the poetry and the time spent thinking about our natural world.
Life List ends with “Farm Work,” a poem about the Ohio farm boy who shot the last known passenger pigeon. The species used to cover the sky, shadowing out the sun, but after years of reckless and thoughtless destruction, the species was driven to extinction. The story of the passenger pigeon is the story of the decimation of bird populations across North America, and how we continue on this path, even if it’s less obvious.
The boy noticed an unfamiliar bird
eating corn in the barnyard
grabbed his shotgun
and asked his mother’s permission
He was a good shot, a natural
“We all are that farm boy,” Beaudin told me, “and we can choose to pull the trigger.” If so, Life List forewarns we’re going to feel the loss.
Monotypes by Storrs Bishop:
“Greater Flamingo”
“Great Horned Owl”
“Magpie”
Marc Beaudin, an Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation artist-in-residence, is a poet, theatre artist and ABAA-member bookseller in Livingston, Montana. He is the author of Life List: Poems (Montana Book Award Honor Winner), the hitchhiking memoir, Vagabond Song: Neo-Haibun from the Peregrine Journals, and several other books. His work has appeared in numerous journals including Cutthroat, High Desert Journal and Whitefish Review, and has been widely anthologized in publications fighting for environmental and social justice. He believes the Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D is more powerful than all the guns, smokestacks and coal trains in the world. More at CrowVoice.com.