Zaina Alsous’s A Theory of Birds is a marvel in using scientific theory and classification to explore womanhood, exile, minority experience, the effects of war, and post-colonialism. The poet uses different kinds and classifications of birds as a binding metaphor throughout the book to explore these different themes.
In the collection’s opening poem, “Bird Prelude,” the dodo encompasses all. “Inside the dodo bird is a forest,” Alsous writes, and continues naming things within each other, within the forest a “peach analog,” within that, a woman, and each consecutive thing contains a thing within, much like a matryoshka doll. Among other things of the world, we find a lake for funerals and a language for naming, inside of which is an algorithm for de-extinction. The question the poems in A Theory of Birds tries to answer is introduced in this very first poem: what is this language of naming, who speaks it, what are its rules, and how can we use it to define ourselves, thus creating a map for not only surviving, but perhaps also thriving? Alsous stands on the shoulders of scientific poets before her, such as May Swenson, who also uses the scientific method to poke through the fabric of the universe and demand answers, of the universe itself and of humanity.
Read Aiya Sakr’s full review at The Rumpus.
A Theory of Birds: Poems by Zaina Alsous is the winner of the 2019 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize.