A Tree with a Bird in it: A Symposium of Contemporary American Poets on Being Shown a Pear-tree on Which Sat a Grackle — Reading Notes

The Symposium as Structure

The book’s organizing principle is the symposium—a formal gathering of poets, each contributing a poem on a single subject. Widdemer leans into this conceit with a foreword that explains the occasion: she lived in a house with a pear tree, a grackle took up residence, and she invited members of the Poetry Society of America to compose verses under its branches. The poems are then presented in sequence, with the poet’s name as a heading and, in many cases, a brief editorial note in parentheses—for example, “William Griffith (Who felt for her.)” or “Edgar Guest (Who has an air of absolute belief in the True, the Optimistic, and the Checkbook.).” These asides function as stage directions, guiding the reader’s response and reinforcing the sense of a live performance. The structure creates a rhythm of anticipation: each new poet brings a new voice, and the reader watches for how the grackle and pear tree will be transformed.

Recurring Images and Their Transformations

The grackle and pear tree are the book’s fixed points, but they appear in wildly different guises. In Jessie B. Rittenhouse’s “Resignation,” the bird is a symbol of quiet endurance; in Edwin Markham’s “The Bird with the Woe,” it becomes a figure of tragic burden. Amy Lowell’s “Oiseaurie” treats it as an object of imagist perception, while Edgar Lee Masters’ “Imri Swazey” gives it a Spoon River backstory. The pear tree itself shifts from a literal tree to a metaphor for rootedness, memory, or artistic constraint. Widdemer’s own contribution, “The Sighing Tree,” leans into a sentimental, lyrical mode. The recurrence of these two images across forty poems creates a kind of fugue: the same elements are recombined, and the reader’s attention is drawn to what each poet chooses to emphasize or ignore. The grackle’s greenness, its harsh call, its position in the tree—these details are picked up, dropped, and transformed.

Movement Between Voices

The book’s pleasure lies in the rapid shifts between poets. A sequence might move from the earnest moralizing of Edwin Markham to the playful abstraction of Witter Bynner to the imagist precision of Amy Lowell. The transitions are abrupt, and Widdemer often uses the editorial notes to heighten the contrast. After Edgar Guest’s cheerful platitudes, Don Marquis’s “The Meeting of the Columns” bursts in with a boozy, self-referential energy, complete with references to newspaper columns and drinking. Christopher Morley’s “The Mocking-Hoarse Bird” follows, adopting a genial, conversational tone that contrasts with Marquis’s rowdiness. The effect is like channel-surfing through a literary party: each poem is a snapshot of a distinct personality. The reader is invited to recognize the poets, to compare their approaches, and to enjoy the sheer variety of ways a single subject can be handled. The movement between voices also underscores the book’s central joke: that a grackle in a pear tree is a pretext for poets to write about themselves.

The Role of the Illustrations

William Saphier’s illustrations punctuate the text, though only a few are visible in the excerpts. The title page and table of contents suggest that each poem is accompanied by a drawing. The illustrations likely reinforce the book’s playful tone, providing visual counterparts to the verbal parodies. In the excerpts, the illustrations are not described, but their presence is implied by the credit line and the book’s design. The combination of text and image was common in 1920s humor books, and Saphier’s style—based on the period’s fashion for whimsical line drawings—probably complements Widdemer’s light touch. The illustrations also serve a structural function: they break up the sequence of poems, giving the reader a visual pause between voices. Without seeing them, one can infer that they likely depict the grackle, the pear tree, and the poets themselves in various comic situations, adding another layer of parody to the enterprise.

Widdemer’s symposium is best read as a series of quick, knowing sketches. The poems reward familiarity with the poets being parodied, but they also work as independent comic pieces. The book’s structure—a sequence of voices, each distinct—invites the reader to move through it in order, savoring the contrasts. The grackle and pear tree are the thread that holds it together, but the real subject is the poets themselves: their habits, their tics, their ways of seeing. A reader who knows the originals will find the parodies sharper; a reader who does not will still enjoy the variety of styles and the book’s good-natured wit.

The rain kept up its steady drumming while I laughed through Margaret Widdemer’s pear-tree grackle, admiring how faithfully she caught each poet’s tick. Her gentle mimicry made me wonder about the real thing beneath the parody, and by evening I was turning pages of a quieter voice, one that found its own raw music in the shell-bursts of war. Over the Brazier — Key Ideas to Explore felt like finding the original photograph after studying a clever cartoon.