The Hazing of Swans

Suzanne Paola

Tell it Slant

Quality of Voice? “The boys found both self-preservation and swan- watching equally unworthy.” The voice is’nt lacking humor but even in sections such as this there is a certain scholarly quality.

What are some of the specific words or phrases that bring this essay into focus for you?  “I can imagine that we would seem strange, fetishistic to that age, crowding in whale watching trawlers to chase orcas and whatever, blackening out eyes with binoculars.” This drew to mind for me the way people travel in order to see certain animals and natural happenings in the wild and through that process, travel, pollution, are eliminating them.

Where does this writer create images and or scenes? “When swans walk it’s like seeing a piece of your grandmother’s ceramic collection rise and waddle.”

Where does this writer “tell?” “if time fluctuated just a little, these babies, scrunched and out of it, might wear trumpeter swan-skin onesies, be rubbed with ambergris.” This is more of a thought but in it she is telling how she views the fluidity of time and change.

What kinds of sentence variety, phrasing, etc. add to the quality of this piece? Towards the end she includes a scene with dialogue which gives the piece energy. The inclusion of the conversation in a paper heavy on description and fact kept it lively.

Questions:

Was it ever discovered why only some birds in family groups were dying if they all fed together?

What separate threads did you actively create when writing this piece?