Four short lines are enough for Dave Bonta to pick a playful quarrel with one of the best-known bird poems in English. His title, "Blithe spirit," borrows the phrase Shelley uses to greet the skylark in "To a Skylark," where the bird is hardly a bird at all, just a pure voice pouring down from the sky. Bonta keeps the lark and the joy, but he drags both down to earth and onto a dance floor.
What he gives us is a lark seen as a young man: wildly happy, half-dressed, and out to impress. The central idea seems to be that ecstasy doesn't have to be lofty. The giddiness Shelley placed in the heavens turns up here in something comic, bodily and social. The poem doesn't mock the old ideal. It lets it loose in a nightclub.
The construction is quick and slightly off-balance. Counting "dishabille" as three syllables, the lines run roughly four, seven, five and four, so the second line sprawls while the others are clipped. The first line is a flat, confident statement, "The lark is mad," and the dash after "disco" then swerves into a new picture, the way a dancer might change direction mid-step. The rhyme is hidden rather than formal. "Mad" at the end of line one is answered by "lad" in the middle of line three, so the chime arrives out of place, like a beat that lands early. The last two lines are held together by "court" and "coat," which don't quite rhyme but share their opening and closing consonants, a near-miss that snaps the poem shut. Smaller echoes run underneath. "Lark" and "lad" share an l. "Disco" repeats the "dis" of "dishabille," and the "sh" of "dishabille" returns in "ash." The sounds seem to shuffle across the lines.
The word choices do most of the work. "Mad" can mean crazy, thrilled or even furious, and it makes a sharp contrast with Shelley's serene "blithe." "Dishabille" is an elegant, French-derived word for being casually or partly dressed. Placing it right next to the slangy, brash "disco" sets two registers against each other, and the clash is the joke. Its long, slippery sound is also a pleasure to say out loud, which suits a poem about delight.
"Court" is the other pivotal word. Birdsong is, among other things, a form of courtship, so a lark in love is natural enough, but "court" also sounds old-fashioned and courtly. The line break adds a small trick: "a fine lad, to court" ends on a verb of purpose, and only afterwards does "in his ash coat" tell us how he goes about it. For a beat, the lad is simply someone worth courting. Then he is someone courting in his shabby best.
That last image is the richest. "Coat" can be a bird's plumage or a man's jacket, and the poem lets both readings stand. "Ash" suggests grey, plain and unshowy, perhaps even what is left after a fire. Judging by the imagery, the lad is a modest figure who has burned himself bright. Calling him "fine" while dressing him in ash is a small act of affection: splendour, the poem implies, doesn't need splendid clothes.
The poem's significance lies in this exchange with Shelley. Shelley's skylark is a "Bird thou never wert," an unearthly spirit, and Bonta answers by giving that spirit a body, a wardrobe and a Saturday night. Something is lost, since there is no soaring and no grand philosophy, but something is gained: humour, warmth and a sense that joy belongs to messy, ordinary life. The poem also shows how much a tiny form can hold. In about twenty syllables it echoes a famous predecessor, turns a bird into a character, and leaves the reader smiling at the idea of the sky's most celebrated singer getting ready to dance.