Crow

April 5, 2004
In this vivid and enjoyable meditation on crows in art, literature and history, Sax (The Serpent and the Swan: The Animal Bride in Folklore and Literature), a scholar at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York, gives the genus Corvus the enthusiastic treatment it deserves. Crows have always preoccupied people--as tricksters and crop thieves, as harbingers of death or creators of the world, as models of marital fidelity and bearers of prophecy. But Sax's book is more than an endearing act of monomania. Part of a series that includes odes to dogs, ants, snakes and other cardinal companions and familiar pests, this volume emphasizes that animals and allegory are still fundamental to the human imagination. The 95 illustrations (27 in color) are beautifully reproduced: from a Japanese ink drawing of a plump crow bending plum boughs to contemporary photographs of the Yeoman Raven Master feeding his wards at the Tower of London, where they are believed to protect the English Crown. Sax can sound moralizing when he generalizes; in his discussion of Poe's"The Raven" he asserts:"Few people ... stop to even consider what the poem might be about." The book's organization--by region and epoch--is logical but not necessarily ideal. The inevitable overlaps in regional and historical views leads to a kind of redundancy rather than the kind of elaboration that might have arisen in a more free-ranging discussion. Sax is wholly successful, however, in transmitting the wonder and admiration with which he regards these iconic birds. +

July 5, 2004
In this vivid and enjoyable meditation on crows in art, literature and history, Sax (The Serpent and the Swan: The Animal Bride in Folklore and Literature), a scholar at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York, gives the genus Corvus the enthusiastic treatment it deserves. Crows have always preoccupied people--as tricksters and crop thieves, as harbingers of death or creators of the world, as models of marital fidelity and bearers of prophecy. But Sax's book is more than an endearing act of monomania. Part of a series that includes odes to dogs, ants, snakes and other cardinal companions and familiar pests, this volume emphasizes that animals and allegory are still fundamental to the human imagination. The 95 illustrations (27 in color) are beautifully reproduced: from a Japanese ink drawing of a plump crow bending plum boughs to contemporary photographs of the Yeoman Raven Master feeding his wards at the Tower of London, where they are believed to protect the English Crown. Sax can sound moralizing when he generalizes; in his discussion of Poe's"The Raven" he asserts: "Few people ... stop to even consider what the poem might be about." The book's organization--by region and epoch--is logical but not necessarily ideal. The inevitable overlaps in regional and historical views leads to a kind of redundancy rather than the kind of elaboration that might have arisen in a more free-ranging discussion. Sax is wholly successful, however, in transmitting the wonder and admiration with which he regards these iconic birds. +

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