Destiny O. Birdsong: Infinite Negotiations
2020 has, by and large, been a terrible year—but it has been a great one for new poetry. Of the many excellent collections released since January, my favorite so far is the Nashville-based poet Destiny O. Birdsong’s emotionally and intellectually wide-ranging debut Negotiations. Birdsong is a committed individualist, dedicated to representing the full spectrum of self on the page. For her, this means roving between pop culture and Trump-era politics, gastroenterology and Romantic poetry, imagined families and real-life ASMR pickle-eating videos. Birdsong is a master of the unexpected turn, and of blending high and low—she can take a poem from tragic to hilarious in a stanza, or prompt tears when the reader least expects them.
Birdsong is also an expert at writing contradiction. In “The 400-Meter Heat,” a poem that emerges from Bahamian sprinter Shaunae Miller’s 2016 Olympic victory over American Allyson Felix, Birdsong writes, “I’m saddest whenever two black women are competing / because I never know who to root for, / and I’m arrogant enough to believe my split loyalty / fails them (which makes me more American again.)” Split loyalties recur throughout Negotiations. Birdsong is plainly fascinated by the incongruities she finds in being Black and American, as well as in being a woman who loves men. Yet she never slides into heteropessimism or disavows her country; instead, she stares her mixed feelings down, as in “i too sing america,” which opens, “but mostly // when it’s convenient / when i’m abroad // i fucking love / the constitution.”
Negotiations is a loving collection, and, ultimately, a joyful one. Birdsong and I spoke about writing toward that joy, her collection’s genesis and evolution, and the infinite negotiations involved in writing poetry. In conversation, as on the page, she is relaxed, erudite, and immensely generous.
— Lily Meyer for Guernica
Guernica: I want to begin with a question that always strikes me as important to ask poets: What is your relationship to the speaker or speakers of the poems in Negotiations?
Our relationship is pretty close. I’d tell you that much of what happens to the speaker in the poems happened to me. But at least for now, I think it’s somewhat important to make the distinction that there are
