My one beef is the failure to mention a ridiculous birder representation that lacks the ubiquity of the Jane Hathaway tropes but reflects them and is a daily inside joke in our house: John McGiver in “Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation.”
“Barn Swallow!”
www.imdb.com/title/tt0056...
![A Poem About Poems About Vietnam
The spotlights had you covered [thunder
in the wings]. In the combat zones
and in the Circle, darkness. Under
the muzzles of the microphones
you opened fire, and a phalanx
of loudspeakers shook on the wall;
but all your cartridges were blanks
when you were at the Albert Hall.
Lord George Byron cared for Greece,
Auden and Cornford cared for Spain,
confronted bullets and disease
to make their poems' meaning plain;
but you—by what right did you wear
suffering like a service medal,
numbing the nerve that they laid bare,
when you were at the Albert Hall?
The poets of another time—
Owen with a rifle-butt
between his paper and the slime,
Donne quitting Her pillow to cut
a quill—knew that in love and war
dispatches from the front are all.
We believe them, they were there,
when you were at the Albert Hall.
Poet, they whisper in their sleep
louder from underground than all
the mikes that hung upon your lips
when you were at the Albert Hall.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:jsbombxaxent7mi3bllna6gf/bafkreidg3lz3zskc3umwk7su6bzqb2pn6aiwkmfcerh4trn2lhtzkbwmsm)
