Jet Fuel Review
  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Masthead
  • Submit
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Submit Here
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Book Reviews
  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022
Picture

Book Review: Audubon’s Sparrow: A Biography-in-Poems ​by Juditha Dowd
 
Juditha Dowd
Audubon’s Sparrow: A Biography-in-Poems
Rose Metal Press, 2020
ISBN: 978-1941628218
144 pages
$15.95


Juditha Dowd is the author of Mango in Winter (Grayson Books, 2013), as well as the chapbooks What Remains (Finishing Line Press, 2009), The Weathermancer (Finishing Line Press, 2006), and Back Where We Belong (Casa de Cinco Hermanas, 2012). Her work appears in many journals and anthologies, including Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, The Florida Review, Spillway, Rock & Sling, Kestrel, and About Place. With the ensemble Cool Women she regularly performs poetry in the New York-Philadelphia metro area and occasionally on the west coast. With her husband and two cats, she lives in Easton, Pennsylvania, near the Delaware River. It is not far from where Lucy Bakewell – the subject of the Audubon’s Sparrow poetic biography – began her long-ago adventure with famed nature artist John James Audubon, who would become her husband.

​

Review


























A Review of Juditha Dowd's Audubon's Sparrow: A Biography-in-Poems
 

Exposition is an essential but elusive aspect of any narrative. With an epistolary work such as Audubon’s Sparrow, it can prove especially tricky. Writers frequently solve the problem with the insertion of imagined clippings from newspapers or other news reports. Since a journalist’s audience will require background information and context, its inclusion feels more natural than its placement in an exchange of personal letters or dairy entries. Recreated newspaper accounts can thereby supply an occasional omnipresent narrator to connect the dots.

Dowd eschews that approach, and the narrative of Lucy Bakewell’s life story is too obscure for most readers to rely upon for context. Instead, an elegant preface supplies a foundational framework. From then on, Dowd’s seventy-seven pieces – imagined letters, diary entries, some free verse poems, even a bill of sale – carry their own weight in moving the narrative forward. A Chronology as an appendix fills in additional sequencing. A few reproductions of Audubon’s lithographs are also appropriate additions.

Rose Metal Press, the respected small press responsible for Audubon’s Sparrow, claims as its tagline, “An independent publisher of hybrid genres.” Indeed, Audubon’s Sparrow qualifies as a hybrid. That said, however, Dowd is a poet. Even her non-poems seem like poems (much as Mary Karr’s memoirs read more like verse than prose). Still, it is fair to characterize Audubon’s Sparrow as a hybrid work. The imagined letters scan very much like bona fide 19th century personal correspondence. The poems read like poems.

The story begins with Lucy Bakewell’s introduction to John James Audubon (formerly Jean-Jacques Rabin) told initially through her diary entries. One entry reveals their growing affection as she adopts a pet name for him, La Forest. On the eve of Bakewell’s marriage to Audubon, her diary entry – titled “Tomorrow Morning” – captures the impatience and optimism of an eighteen-year-old. It reads:
   La Forest returned to us on Monday night

   along with his new partner Ferdinand Rozier –

   both cheerful and none the worse for wear.

   Louisville, they swear, has opportunity!
 

   We will wed in the parlor at half past ten.

   At last it is to be. 
By contrast, the pure poems function as interiorized thoughts never actually committed to paper. They are more dreamlike – less Victorian – and more beautiful.

Still other pieces combine the natural and poetic voices, as in “Henderson, Kentucky:” 
Less competition here

              more birds to draw.
 
This study cabin is out first real home

My husband writes in his journal
​
As better could not be had we were pleased.
A Notes section in the collection’s appendix confirms that although the italicized language quoted above sounds like that of a poet’s, it is in fact genuine historical text (minus a comma) extracted from the third volume of Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, or an Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America (Adam & Charles Black, 1835) by the ornithologist himself.

Historical reconstructions of women and minorities who lived in a more bigoted age can create instabilities in the hands of 21st century authors. As a title, Audubon’s Sparrow suggests discomfort with the 19th century worldview of women; it hints at an irreverent, diminutive, and timid characterization of Bakewell even as it is adopted by the collection’s author. (The reference to Bakewell as a small bird has historical roots in that Audubon once directed an engraver to inscribe a swamp sparrow plate with his wife’s name for reasons now unknown.) Yet Bakewell was resourceful, spirited, and tall – very unlike a sparrow. Slaves are simply mentioned twice in the collection in a matter-of-fact way, without comment, which may also seem insensitive, but it keeps the voice authentically early 19th century white upper crust.

Although boasting aristocratic origins, both John Audubon and Lucy Bakewell were immigrants. Bakewell grew up in England and arrived with her well-to-do family at age fifteen. Audubon, born in Saint-Domingue (Haiti), was spirited out of France by a father of means with a forged passport so as to avoid conscription into Napoleon’s armies. The two married in Connecticut in 1808. They soon met with severe and incessant financial worries, with Bakewell supplying the laboring oar to keep their fragile household boat afloat.

Eventually, Audubon returned to Europe, attempting to market his naturalistic paintings and find an audience which evaded him in America. Bakewell remained behind. In the primary arc of Dowd’s collection, Bakewell struggles to support the family with private teaching contracts during Audubon’s multi-year absence. Their letters cross. Their marriage falters. His return becomes less and less certain, even as he makes good on his ambitions to build a fan base.

In “I Will Not Write Tonight,” Bakewell’s thoughts compose themselves into a complaint: 
let him swagger

let him have his bright success


 
and let it keep accounts for him
​
            and share his bed.
These poems bubble with imaginative empathy. They are truly engaging. They take wing. Dowd dignifies Bakewell without diminishing the mercurial genius of her husband or Bakewell’s affection for him. Dowd paints Bakewell as sympathetically bitter and – at the same time – essential, honest, and heroic.

John Audubon has been closely studied by biographers and rightly celebrated in poems, most notably in Robert Penn Warren’s book-length Audubon: A Vision (Random House, 1969). Attention to Lucy Bakewell has been more or less limited to a straightforward prose biography by Carolyn E. DeLatte, Lucy Audubon: A Biography (LSU Press, 2008) which focuses on Bakewell’s early life. Scrutiny of Bakewell by poets is long overdue. Dowd addresses that deficiency with a worthwhile, evocative, and finely wrought contribution.


Picture
Thomas E. Simmons is a professor of law at the University of South Dakota’s Knudson School of Law. He is a lifelong South Dakotan, an amateur historian, and a practicing lawyer. His scholarship addresses fiduciaries, inheritance, wealth, incapacity, and death. His first full length collection of poems, Tod Browning Loose-Leaf Encyclopedia, a poetic biography and series of film studies, was published in 2020 by Cyberwit. 

    Get updates from jet fuel review

Subscribe to Newsletter
© COPYRIGHT 2019. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Masthead
  • Submit
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Submit Here
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Book Reviews
  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022