{"id":42693,"date":"2024-11-18T06:30:51","date_gmt":"2024-11-17T17:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=42693"},"modified":"2024-11-17T17:26:46","modified_gmt":"2024-11-17T04:26:46","slug":"on-crows-plus-a-lil-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2024\/11\/18\/on-crows-plus-a-lil-more\/","title":{"rendered":"On Crows…(Plus A L’il More :-) )"},"content":{"rendered":"

“A crow can recall every route it has ever taken\u2026crows are messengers, spies, guides, companions, harbingers of luck, deliverers of trinkets and treasures, tireless in all ways, more loyal than any other man or beast.”<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

~Alice Hoffman<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

I’m sure you all know Alice Hoffman’s writing, but if not, you may recognize the names Practical Magic<\/em> and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow<\/em>. But she’s published over thirty books so there is a lot more to check out and enjoy.<\/p>\n

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For today, though, I’m focusing on this quote, attributed to her, which I love — as I also love crows. We don’t have them here in Aotearoa-New Zealand, but I’ve encountered them in Australia and Europe.<\/p>\n

Of course, crows also have a bad rep in some quarters, as their collective terminology, “a murder of crows”<\/em> indicates.<\/p>\n

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I also love the way Joanna Preston<\/a> explores that rep in her poem of the same name, which is part of the Venery<\/em> sequence:<\/p>\n

“The wires were thick with them now,<\/em><\/span>
\nhunched like grief against the sky.<\/em><\/span>
\n…<\/span>
\na crow to show you<\/span>
\nthat a corvid’s breastbone<\/span>
\nis the keel of a longship,<\/span>
\ncleaving the air<\/span>
\n…”<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9\u00a0 Joanna Preston, The Summer King<\/em><\/strong>, Otago University Press, 2009<\/p>\n

I’ve only featured a few of my favourite lines, but what a way with words, eh?<\/p>\n

Absolutely no surprises (imho) that both The Summer King<\/em> and Jo’s second collection, Tumble<\/em>, have won multiple awards and been widely praised.<\/p>\n

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If you’d like to read some of her poems in full, as featured here and on The Tuesday Poem<\/a> blog, here’s the list:<\/p>\n