34. Anne Haven McDonnell — “The Study”
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When she was in her twenties, Anne Haven McDonnell worked on an organic farm on an island in British Columbia. She made good friends and visited frequently in the years that followed. In her time there, she had some encounters with wolves, who live wild on the island, and she began to explore the tensions around co-existence with wolves.
As Anne turned her attention full-time to poetry, she began to write about wolves and the people who share space with them. On this episode, we dive into one of those poems: “The Study.”
I’m John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis. You can subscribe at johnfiege.earth, where you will also find show notes and all episodes of the podcast, plus my writing, photographs, and films.
Anne Haven McDonnell lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her poems have been published widely, including in Orion Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, and The Georgia Review. She is the author of Singing Under Snow, winner of the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and Breath on a Coal, winner of the Halcyon Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry and a MacDowell fellowship, and she has held residencies at the Andrews Forest and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.
This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series. I spoke with Anne on September 13, 2022.
Here is Anne Haven McDonnell reading her poem, “The Study.”
The Study
Anne Haven McDonnell
There is the silence of an August
afternoon, the lake gun-bright
and still. The silence of the oysterman's
laundry: white socks, a blue shirt
strung across two fence posts.
Empty oyster shells
piled on the beach.
There is the silence of a trap, metal
teeth sprung and bit,
the silence after the rifle has fired,
its black eye pointed
at the ground
There is the silence draining
from the wolf's eyes, the blood
bubbling from the hole like
a spring.
Between the farmer's house
and the flute player's house
a wolf pisses along
the property line.
There is the silence of a fawn,
whole and wet and speckled
as a fish, slicking the moss
with afterbirth.
The brittle silence of the road sign,
Wolf Creek, pointing to a creek
with no wolves.
The yawning silence of snow
covering the beach without tracks.
After the bounties, the insects
trained the silence, clicking
their laws, the forest thinking,
trying to remember its name.
Notes and Media Recommendations
- Singing Under Snow by Anne Haven McDonnell
- Breath on a Coal by Anne Haven McDonnell
- Living with Wolves by Anne Haven McDonnell
- Anne Haven McDonnell's profile on National Endowment for the Arts
- Anne Haven McDonnell's profile on poets.org
- Anne Haven McDonnell's profile on MacDowell
Credits
This episode was researched by Nina Bunn and edited by Sarah Westrich, Kathryn Fair, and Alice McClain. The podcast assistant is Domenica Klamm. Music is by Daniel Rodríguez Vivas. Mixing is by Morgan Honaker.