Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "Becoming Bird" is a meditation on transformation, obsession, and the intersection of art with the body. The poem follows a man’s journey from a simple tattoo to a full-body metamorphosis, where ink and imagination take on an unsettling momentum, pulling him toward an identity beyond the human. This narrative, with its surreal elements and visceral descriptions, explores the tension between aspiration and entrapment, between the symbolic and the physical, as the speaker seeks transcendence but ends with something both miraculous and futile.

The poem begins abruptly and ominously: "It began with a gun to his back." This line, carrying the weight of violence and coercion, is immediately followed by an equally unsettling image: "Facedown, he sniffed the skin of dead men on an injection table the artist bought for fifty from her cousin when the local style of capital punishment regressed from chemical to electrical." The detail of "regressed from chemical to electrical" suggests a brutal return to an older, cruder method of execution, setting up the poem’s concern with bodily modification and control. The fact that the tattoo artist works on an injection table bought secondhand from a world of death adds a macabre undercurrent—the transformation being undertaken here is bound up with mortality, as if the body is always in tension between its current state and its inevitable decay.

The initial tattoo—"one feather outside each scapula"—is inspired by an encounter with art: "an idea that arrived while he flipped Art Through the Ages past the side view of Kritios Boy." Kritios Boy, a classical Greek sculpture, represents an early shift toward naturalism in art. Even though "without arms and confined to the appetite of marble," the statue appears "poised for air," suggesting a latent movement, a longing for flight despite its stillness. This moment establishes the central theme: the desire to escape human limitations, to reach for an impossible elevation beyond flesh.

But once the tattoos heal, their impact underwhelms him: "the lonely feathers asked to be plucked." The ink alone is not enough. This dissatisfaction reflects a common phenomenon—body modification leading to a need for more, a creeping addiction to transformation. The "black ink grew from a root of dusk to charcoal tip, they’d have fluttered if wind arrived, reflex to join the rush, but alone seemed less symbolic than forgotten." The phrasing suggests that the feathers are inert, unfulfilled without the presence of wind, without a greater movement to participate in. The tattoos do not bring flight; they merely suggest it, leaving the speaker longing for something more tangible.

Thus, he returns to the tattoo shop—"the Cunning Needle, to Martha of pierced tongue and navel." Her physical modifications mark her as an accomplice in his journey, someone who understands transformation as both self-expression and compulsion. When he asks for "wings," her response—"she slapped the table"—suggests enthusiasm, perhaps a sense of recognition. This time, the tattooing process is more elaborate: "added coverts and scapulars, secondaries and tertials, for a year needles chewed his skin closer to hawk, to dove, injected acrylic through tiny pearls of blood." The anatomical precision of the wings—the layering of different types of feathers—suggests that this is not a whimsical desire but an obsessive pursuit of authenticity. The choice of "hawk, to dove" captures a duality: the predator and the symbol of peace, aggression and transcendence.

The transformation deepens until it overtakes his entire body: "Then with a back that belonged to the sky he couldn’t stop, sprouted feathers to collarline, down thighs, past knees and his feet became scaled, claws gripped the tops of his toes." The phrase "a back that belonged to the sky" is telling—his body is no longer his own, but part of a greater, elemental force. His feet turning into "scaled, claws" pushes the transformation further into the uncanny, blurring the boundary between human and bird.

The moment of full surrender arrives when "she turned him over for the fine work of down, he laid, arms on the syringe-wings of the table, a model of crucifixion dreaming flight through the pricks." The "syringe-wings" evoke both medical precision and pain, while the "model of crucifixion" suggests sacrifice, suffering for the sake of transcendence. He is not just modifying his body—he is undergoing a form of martyrdom, suffering in pursuit of flight.

By the poem’s end, the physical transformation is complete, but the existential question remains unresolved. The speaker now "can barely hold back the confidence of his wings." His identification with the bird is so deep that he can imagine himself hunting: "he feels wind as music and dreams his body toward a mouse skimming the woven grass, not considering but inhabiting the attack." This final moment is significant—he is no longer merely wanting to be a bird; he has begun to think as one, losing the human distinction between contemplation and instinct. He does not consider the hunt—he inhabits it, signaling that his transformation has reached a psychological level.

Yet, the poem closes with an image that undercuts the speaker’s imagined flight: "while from the ink of the first tattoo a real feather grows, useless but patient." This real feather—seemingly miraculous—carries both the promise and the futility of his journey. It is a sign that something tangible has emerged from his obsession, yet it is "useless," unable to grant him the flight he desires. The word "patient" suggests that the process is not yet complete, that something more might come, but whether that something is fulfillment or further frustration remains uncertain.

Hicok’s "Becoming Bird" is a meditation on the limits of transformation, on the ways the body can be reshaped but never fully escape its nature. The poem moves from artistic inspiration to bodily modification to psychological immersion, charting a trajectory where desire grows into obsession, and obsession into an altered reality. The final image—of a single real feather, neither confirming nor denying the speaker’s metamorphosis—leaves the reader with a lingering question: is this a moment of transcendence, or of irrevocable delusion?

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