Audubon perfected a new way of drawing birds that he called his.
On the bottom of each watercolor he put "drawn from nature"
which meant he shot the birds
and took them home to stuff and paint them.
Because he hated the unvarying shapes
of traditional taxidermy
he built flexible armatures of bent wire and wood
on which he arranged bird skin and feathers--
or sometimes
whole eviscerated birds--
in animated poses.
Not only his wiring but his lighting was new.
Audubon colors dive in through your retina
like a searchlight
roving shadowlessly up and down the brain
until you turn away.
-Anne Carson
