The Ravens Who Scream from the Woods
The ravens are screaming at me today,
screaming in a language that I do not
know about mysteries I’m sure I can’t
understand. They’re screaming from way
out in the woods, screaming something about
pain, screaming about human horror,
and the bloody goddamned pornographic gore
that I’ve seen so much I’ve become blind to it.
I think if they could, they would sit me down
and explain what being alive and an adult means,
what it means to be responsible,
but I (like all humanity) prefer to drown
it all out, so all they have left is to scream,
to pray, to hope, to shame, to blame, to scold.
_________________
John Brantingham
Review by Chapman Hood Frazier
I’ve been working steadily on a series of bird poems, so when I read his title and I was instantly interested in reading this poem closely.
The sonnet’s title set me off. Ravens are generally solitary creatures or occasionally appear in pairs. Seldom like crows do they gather in large flocks or murders. Also, ravens are known to make gurgling croaks in response to other ravens. Sometimes they can make alarm calls, short shrill cries to warn of an approaching predator but rarely do they scream. So, the title to me, I found to be off-putting. The ravens in the poem appear to be screaming in a language that the speaker doesn’t know, but then he goes on to identify what the meaning of the screaming is. This contradiction undercuts the climax of the poem.
Perhaps, this rough sonnet would have been stronger had the poet focused on a single raven and really explored that association of the speaker and bird more closely instead of trying to personify the bird to teach a general, moral lesson.