2011 Student Poetry Awards

Ada Limon on Clara Fannjiang

Sometimes there is truth in a poem that comes barreling in loud and bristling, other times the truth comes quietly, leans up next to you, and gives you a sneaky little thumbs up. "Bird Under the Lamppost" has that sort of truth living within its lines. The speaker is only the observer, only present in the first stanza, then the poem is given up to bird. Both action and sound work together beautifully, as does that "tick and tine/of light against metal," in order to create this singular keyholed world. And what a lively spiral the poem reaches in the end! We go from bird mouth, to sky mouth, to human mouth in a true mastery of wordy flight. "Bird Under the Lamppost" is thoughtful and artful, while vibrating with a unique voice that makes the poem compelling. "Isn't that/how you fly, dear bird" asks the speaker and in the end the question is answered confidently, it is indeed how we all fly. In seven quiet quatrains the poem's internal structure plays with a balance between the small and the large, the specific and the abstract, and (with the use of these wonderful parenthesis) the idea of containment and freedom. But, in the end, what drew me to the poem was the very simple sense of possibility, of restoration, of the sky not looming, but opening. May it always do so for this young poet.