Jeff Gundy

(Click here for text of Gundy's poem.)

On the surface, Jeff Gundy's "Inquiry into Gifts, or the Indigo Bunting" seems to be a poem about a dream of the speaker and the birds within this dream. However, this is not a poem that should be taken at face value; it contains skillful metaphors which point to a religious experience encountered by the speaker.

The first prominent image in the poem is “beautiful indigo bunting” (line 2). The poem's title suggests that the bunting is a gift, and the poem hints that this gift is of divine origins. Lines 4 and 5 suggest that the “splendor” of this gift can only be seen with the “sun / at your back,” or when facing away from the light. If the bunting represents a gift from God, then one can only realize its splendor when facing away from God.

According to lines 7 and 8 of the poem, the bunting knows “full well how strange and rare / it is” and knows that the offering of its gift may be gone before anyone realizes it was there. This does not necessarily mean that God is going to remove the opportunity for the gift, but rather that the recipients will merely fail to notice the opportunity. Lines 10-12 say that “the world was made not to be noticed, / as though God had some job for us / beside seeing.” This suggests that the bunting is not noticed because that is the way God has designed the situation. But, as mentioned previously, the wonders of God’s gift are noticeable only when one is walking away from God and not experiencing God's full glory. As the old adage goes, one often doesn’t appreciate things until they are gone.

Lines 11 and 12 suggest that the job God has in mind for us is not much more than faith, worship, and basically just loving God. Perhaps God is more concerned with these actions than with any task that might require our earthly eyes. In fact, the next few lines of the poem suggest that we were given eyes “for making right turns and keeping / the rows straight” (lines 13-14). In other words, we have the ability of sight to sustain ourselves while we exist on earth.

Birds show up again as an extended metaphor in lines 16-23. These lines begin with the mention of "some dumb gritty pressure" (line 16) on the speaker of the poem, as though s/he were being pushed toward something that s/he does not want to be a part of. Unlike the birds that “are all robins and grackles” (line 19), the speaker does not want to simply conform. The image of the “robins and grackles” could refer to those who confrom to the rtuals of organized religion without really thinking about it.

The speaker goes on to highlight the undesirable actions and mentalities of the conformists. This is done by pointing out that the robins and grackles are "beautiful / not even to each other" (lines 19-20). These creatures are also “noisy / and jealous of their turf” (lines 20-21), qualities that are certainly undesirable. Perhaps what the speaker finds the most unattractive about them is that they think “that if there is a God / he has done nothing for them lately” (lines 22-23). The speakers seems to reject all of these negative behaviors and mentalities.

The bird metaphor changes in line 24 when a "strange bird" enters the poem. This bird is a dark shadow beckoning while the speaker is looking into the sun (i.e., the Light), although the speaker says the bird “shakes / itself off to a further branch / before it even hears me looking” (lines 26-28).  It seems that in this section of the poem, the bird represents a doubt of the divine which dissipates before the speaker has a chance to fully consider it.

Through seemingly surface-level natural images, Gundy’s “Inquiry into Gifts, or the Indigo Bunting” explores a profound divine interaction experienced by the speaker of the poem. The speaker is turned away from God, probably in part by those who conform to the negative ideology of those around them. However, the speaker is then graced with the knowledge of how wonderful God and God's gifts are. The dream of the bunting causes a rebirth of the speaker’s faith and the speaker's doubt flies away, leaving him/her to appreciate the glimpse of God's gift which s/he has seen.

Ezra Schrock