The Necessity for Difference

*For those of you who’ve followed me on social media in the last few years, you know that I briefly attended graduate school. Here is the essay that helped me get accepted into my short-lived graduate program.

Difference, more often than not, is predicated on the belief that what misaligns one person from another is not worth celebrating. From the beginning of time, humanity has seemingly made poor meaning out of the things that make us opposite but beautiful. Our views and perceptions of difference can create skewed belief systems of how people should be treated, whether that is based on appreciation or the entitlement to devalue another person. In the examples of J. Drew Lanham’s interview “Breaking Down Barriers and Finding Home in Nature” with the BirdNote podcast and Tom Hiron’s “Sometimes a Wild God,” there are parallels in which to highlight where observing differences, oddities, or peculiarities can push one past the boundary of preconceived perceptions to the authentic engagement of the world, stories, and persons around them.

In listening to Lanham’s interview, this naturalist and lover of nature voices the power of difference in his work as a poet, memoirist, and conservationist. He begins the interview by detailing the sounds and songs of birds he grew familiar with as a child in South Carolina. The setting itself serves as a stark difference, as the beauty of nature rivals the horrendous reality of racism in this southern town. The social construct of race has long been perpetrated to villainize people of color for their “difference” in skin tone, dialect, and phenotypes. Lanham states that his home in Edgefield County is one that is “oriented toward the seasons” (Lanham 2019). This orientation of following the earth’s natural cycle of life, death, rebirth or summer, fall, winter, and spring provide him a solace away from the insidious gaze of racism, even if momentarily. Beneath cascading trees where birds perch on branches between leaves exists a space of ecological “comfort and acceptance” (Lanham 2019).  However, Lanham continues and dissects the contrast between the beauty of the trees and their potential to be weaponized by men who may oppose his existence simply because of the color of his skin. From a selected poem, he reads, “...looking skyward, squinting through leaves filtering June sun through new green, trying to pin names on singing birds above, I sometimes wonder whether there are trees here that someone might hang me from” (Lanham 2019). The place of beauty he describes is marred by the lingering presence of its history. He recognizes that every tree he knows by name bears the possibility of treachery. As a conservationist and avid bird watcher, J. Drew Lanham recognizes the difference race poses in his study of nature and his personal experience, which interconnects. 

In Tom Hirons’ Sometimes a Wild God, the character in the poem is not faced with the apparent difference of race as is Lanham, but with a sense of reconciling the difference within himself. The poem begins with, 

When the wild god arrives at the door,/ you will probably fear him./ He reminds you of something dark/ that you might have dreamt,/ or the secret you do not wish to be shared. 

The raging oddity within leads the character on the uncomfortable journey of confronting his pain that manifests through an uninvited guest, foxes, otters, and a bleeding wound that houses a bear. This wild and strange god is unexpected yet purposeful in his arrival, forcing the host to sit and think about the things he may have spent a lifetime avoiding.  This god serves as a representation of avoidance of pain or discomfort. The wild one’s arrival symbolizes this,

He sits at the table, bleeding./ He coughs up foxes. There are otters in his eyes./ When your wife calls down,/ you close the door and/ Tell her it’s fine. / You will not let her see/ the strange guest at your table.

The difference between the characters in this poem is not so easily seen. One could argue that the peculiarity is the host's inner struggle, his bleeding that spills out into his life, making it impossible for him to sympathize with anyone else, mainly the “outsider” who is also hemorrhaging and shows up holding a looking glass into the host’s life. Through a conversation with this god who carries a bag “made of moles and nightingale skin” full of wildlife and creatures, healing begins to unfold in the manufactured chaos between the stranger and the host (“Sometimes a Wild God - by Tom Hirons” n.d.).  Religion would have us believe that healing happens instantaneously after doing a series of “right things.” Hirons, in this poem, proposes that healing happens when we sit with the strangeness of ourselves and let the otters, snakes, and bears take their course. 

Lanham and the protagonist of Hirons’ poem are an interesting pair as both feel pain on deep levels that, if not intentionally delved into, could create points of contention personally and inter-relationally. If the two were to engage, I think there would be more maturity expressed in Lanham’s experience as someone who actively engages in understanding himself versus Hirons’ character, who resides in the beginning stages of making peace with his story. Through their differences, there could be pockets of empathy and compassion discovered.

As a Black woman from Mississippi and a writer, the characters represent much of my experience with race and the discomfort of wrestling with my version of figurative foxes, otters, and bears that lodge themselves in my side. What drew me to each piece was the element of story and poetry. As in Hirons' work, the idea of being confronted with brokenness and pain reminds me of my stubbornness and eventual journey of ongoing grace. The interview with J. Drew Lanham reminds me of how the South feels like home and a stranger at the same time. What I am continually discovering in my life and with those I engage with is the things that make us different and create worlds of understanding and wells of compassion that lend to diverse perceptions of how we choose to see the world.   

Bibliography

Lanham, J. Drew. 2019. Review of A Conversation with J. Drew Lanham: Breaking down Barriers and Finding Home in Nature Interview by Ashley Ahearn. BirdNote. https://www.birdnote.org/listen/birdnote-presents/conversation-j-drew-lanham.

“Sometimes a Wild God - by Tom Hirons.” n.d. Tom Hirons - Writer and Storyteller. Accessed July 2, 2022. https://tomhirons.com/poetry/sometimes-a-wild-god.