Friday from the Archives: “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Grackle” by Janet Lembke from NCLR 1992
“No grackle, not one, in sight. The air is empty as are the pine-branch perches and the strutting sand along the river. But on a patch of grass still early-morning shaded from the sun of May, a grackle has left half of an eggshell. Its greeny-blue paleness is inscribed with purple scrawls as bold as graffiti. The message, however, is delivered by the shell itself: out of endings, beginnings – the edge of one circle touches the next.”
Janet Lembke, who left us in 2013, was a distinctive voice in American nature writing. A poet, translator, writer and naturalist her words and pen left a mark on our natural world. With 30 published works to her name, Lembke also taught creative writing at Princeton University, Mary Baldwin College, and the Staunton Correctional Center. In “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Grackle,” Lembke details thirteen different moments and experiences involving grackles and different ways they are both perceived and how they live in nature. Accompanied by ECU alumni Stanton Blakeslee’s illustrations, they both weave together a story that can be embraced both literary and artistically.
“The grackles exist. I exist. They do not acknowledge me, nor can I hope to cure them of being themselves. But for a moment it is not impossible for me to emerge from the shadows of my own self-concern.” Two creatures of different species exist together in time and instead of changing the other’s way of life they simply continue to exist together side by side. During a moment in which we can see and understand more about nature, Lembke shows us how disconnected we still truly are. As flocks of grackles fly above in the sky Lembke decides to “stand in the yard watching” and admire nature from afar, appreciating it for what it can be, natural and undisturbed by human influence.
We’ve often discussed making the Grackle our official mascot. What say you?
Read the entire essay on Gale Literature. Make sure you have a copy of the inaugural 1992 issue.
