In a short essay discuss all the elements of poetry that Wilson uses: title, persona, imagery, rhymes/rhythm, figurative language, tone, theme, and structure. Several points to keep in mind are: 

 

1. Discuss ALL the poetic elements that Wilson uses in a full essay—introduction (with a thesis statement), body paragraphs, and a conclusion. State what you think the poem is about and paraphrase a line or two. You should also quote some lines from the poem in your essay as you discuss them.

 

1. How is the poem a "defense" of pigeons, and why does Wilson feel he must defend them? What does he want us to see and understand about pigeons? What is his perspective on these birds?
2. I Find Myself Defending PigeonsBY KEITH S. WILSONI love how you never find their bodies, how they never rest their eyes. I love how their breasts are comforters unfolding by their breath. I love that pigeons live in the city, that underestimation never stopped a pigeon from unlatching itself or being old. I want them all unspooling in the air, and bridges that are half sigh and half pigeon. I want to harbor their coo and utilize it for energy. I want to learn to use them the way they want to be used. I want to pigeontail into a quiet night, to let their oddness sit in our hands. You can never know a language until you quiet your own. I want people to write about them. Their leaving ships for land, or standing on their own on a marble statue in the shimmer of a field. I want to talk about the term rock dove, argue over whether or not it's imperialist. I want the media to implicate us in the pigeon problem, for a couple to sit with their asparagus and kids and realize none of this is far from them, whatever we think. I want oils and watercolors and inks. I want still life with pigeons, since not a one has ever been portrayed with a soul: a flight of them around old bread. And how they're all the same. How all the world is here with them in hate, since they are rats adorned with angel wings, and the children down the street are free to chase their drag: they want to see a pigeon's rouge entirely. Let the pigeon have her pigment. Consider the pigeon's brown and green and everything, the brandishing of his nakedness to the sun, as if nothing is absolute. I love the pigeons' shoulders, tongues, and wedding nights. I love the pigeon's place in history, their obsession with living in the letters of our signs. I love their minds, or what I've come to believe is their theology. Who knows? Let the pigeons speak. Ask the closest pigeon for his number, for her middle name, if they are ready to die, if the sky gets crowded enough to consider war, if their stores are closed on Sundays. I want to be ready for them to be just like us, but more ready for them to be completely different. I don't want to waste any time tracing a pigeon's god to Abraham. I want to get started. Some of us feed pigeons. I love, sometimes, our care. I love, I think, the park bench. I love apples, but I do not love pears. The weather. I love the pigeons, the revolution of wheel to sky. I love the newspaper graying in a different air.