The Review of Contemporary Fiction

A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell by Jonathan Safran Foer, ed.
Peter Donahue

Jonathan Safran Foer, ed. A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell. Distributed Art Publishers, 2001. 240 pp. $27.50.

The twenty-two verbal assemblages here testify to the profound and enduring allure of Joseph Cornell’s art. Mary Caponegro records the artist himself as saying, “perhaps this is the solution to the malady of being trapped in boxes—that they have the capacity to liberate others.” The fiction and poetry in A Convergence of Birds have a similar capacity. Like Cornell’s art, the works (which pay homage primarily to the bird boxes) are conceptual without being simplistically surreal. In Barry Lopez’s contribution, imagination leads to spiritual freedom and physical escape for inmates who transform themselves into birds to flee their cells. In Paul West’s “Boxed In” a carpenter has built “hiding holes” for Jesuit priests fleeing persecution in sixteenthth-century England. In Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Box Artist,” the artist realizes the “tenderness of desire that can never be consummated” in creating his secretive and self-contained worlds. Bradford Morrow, in the artist’s voice, pays tribute to Cornell’s brother, who suffered from cerebral palsy and whom Cornell cared for in their home in Queens, New York, for most of his life. Dale Peck’s narrator, in seeking out “J.,” must pass through doors and trek across deserts, reminded of J.’s remark that “the world is just a box.” Two of the more elaborate prose pieces come from Robert Coover and Mary Caponegro. Coover offers intricate word tours of six of Cornell’s hotel boxes, while Caponegro presents a sympathetic correspondence between Cornell and Emily Dickinson, who admires Joseph for showing her “the beauty of any insignificant discarded thing.” The anthology includes twenty-eight photos of Cornell’s boxes, a “miniature” biography of the artist, and an introduction recounting the editor’s quest to realize the work. The fiction and poetry in A Convergence of Birds intrigues in a manner worthy of the works that inspired them. [Peter Donahue]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell by Jonathan Safran Foer, ed. Peter Donahue Jonathan Safran Foer, ed. A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell. Distributed Art Publishers, 2001. 240 pp. $27.50. The twenty-two verbal assemblages here testify to the profound and enduring allure of Joseph Cornell’s art. Mary Caponegro records the artist himself as saying, “perhaps this is the solution to the malady of being trapped in boxes—that they have the capacity to liberate others.” The fiction and poetry in A Convergence of Birds have a similar capacity. Like Cornell’s art, the works (which pay homage primarily to the bird boxes) are conceptual without being simplistically surreal. In Barry Lopez’s contribution, imagination leads to spiritual freedom and physical escape for inmates who transform themselves into birds to flee their cells. In Paul West’s “Boxed In” a carpenter has built “hiding holes” for Jesuit priests fleeing persecution in sixteenthth-century England. In Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Box Artist,” the artist realizes the “tenderness of desire that can never be consummated” in creating his secretive and self-contained worlds. Bradford Morrow, in the artist’s voice, pays tribute to Cornell’s brother, who suffered from cerebral palsy and whom Cornell cared for in their home in Queens, New York, for most of his life. Dale Peck’s narrator, in seeking out “J.,” must pass through doors and trek across deserts, reminded of J.’s remark that “the world is just a box.” Two of the more elaborate prose pieces come from Robert Coover and Mary Caponegro. Coover offers intricate word tours of six of Cornell’s hotel boxes, while Caponegro presents a sympathetic correspondence between Cornell and Emily Dickinson, who admires Joseph for showing her “the beauty of any insignificant discarded thing.” The anthology includes twenty-eight photos of Cornell’s boxes, a “miniature” biography of the artist, and an introduction recounting the editor’s quest to realize the work. The fiction and poetry in A Convergence of Birds intrigues in a manner worthy of the works that inspired them. [Peter Donahue]

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