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Mariely Chavira Acosta

ENGL 1102

Professor Kimberly Purifoy

31 March 2023

Little Bird (By Stephen Iran)

‌ “I didn’t want you to leave. I kept singing.” This is the final line of “Little Bird” a poem

made by Stephen Iran, a transgender “ writer, and performer” whose poems have appeared in

“The American Poetry Review, and tagvverk” (Ross). There is no evidence found of why the

author wrote this poem, but there are some clues of things that happened in his life that may be

the reason why he wrote “Little bird “.As a transgender man, Iran’s life has been challenging.

This can also be more difficult for him because his parents are celebrities. Iran’s poem “little

bird” is about trying to save someone who is in depression, and does not want to live anymore.

This poem has a variety of symbolism of life, death; and a depressed tone. This makes us see life

from the perspective of someone trying to save a loved one that does not want to live.

This poem is structured like a paragraph, and it is a narrative type of poem. Which is why

it tells us a story. The story starts with a little bird who is trying to keep someone by its side in

the same room, but the other person does not seem to care about the little bird. Even though this

person does not show any emotions for the love of the little bird. The little bird “kept singing “,

and making the effort to keep this person in the room(Iran ). The room is a representation of life

in this poem, and the audience can deduce this because in the poem the author says “you can’t
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bring anybody back, but maybe you can keep him here”(Iran ). This line is trying to tell us how

the little bird has already lost someone, and it doesn’t want to lose another person.

In the next lines, we can also see how the “little bird “also represents a person. Which can

also be viewed as a personification of a bird, and symbolize the feelings of the author. The

audience can conclude this because the bird has human feelings and thoughts. It all starts when

the little bird seems tired of singing because it has sung “all night “ for someone who “didn’t

care”(Iran ). People can perceive that this person never gave up, because the little bird stayed in

the room. Even when it knew the other person” was too sad” to care about anything.

Even though Stephen Iran has not confirmed anything of why he wrote this poem. It has

been found that he took action and defended Leelah Alcorn, a transgender woman who

committed suicide in 2015 and was forced to take “conversion therapy “ by her parents, which

may be the reason why she committed suicide (Schares). Iran must have felt empathy for this

young girl, and he probably tried to figure out how she felt before committing suicide. The

audience can also tell that the little bird is afraid of losing someone else. But it kept trying to

keep someone who “showed no sign of loving anything,” even when the bird tried to make this

person support and love (Iran).

As the poem goes on people can start deducing the tone of the poem. This poem has a

depressed tone. The audience can tell this because through the course of the story, we see how

the little bird is around a depressed person, and this person is making the little bird become as

depressed because the bird can not seem to be able to give up. The poem is told from the

perspective of the little bird, but the audience can be able to sympathize with both characters.

One person can sympathize with the little bird because we sense the desperation that the little
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bird feels as it’s trying to save this person, and this can be said because after the bird got tired of

singing it decided to tell the person “ My song was mine and I thought you liked it. I thought you

loved me”(Iran). This shows us how the bird wants to give up for a second because the bird is

noticing how the other person does not want to be saved. At this point, the audience can feel the

frustration that the bird feels, and may also be on the bird's side, because the other person is not

trying to be better, even after all the hard work of that little bird. On the other side, there could be

some people that think that is not this person's fault that the bird wants to save this person,

because, at the end of the day, it is clear that this person does not feel the need of living anymore.

This shows a couple of times throughout the story, and even though the bird wants to save this

person, it can also be selfish to try to save someone who does not want to live just because you

want them to be by your side. This person feels “sad” and is “barely [moving]”, because of this it

is clear that this person is barely alive at this point, but the bird continues its selfish movement,

even after seeing how much this person is suffering and starts “pretending” he is this person

(Iran). This person may be just staying in the room because he knows that the little bird will be

destroyed if this person leaves, but it is clear that this person does not want to be in this life

anymore as much as it hurts the little bird.

In conclusion, this poem is about a personification of a little bird who is trying to save

someone else who is in depression and does not want to live anymore. As we analyze the poem

we could sympathize with both characters of the story, because both of them had their reasons

for their actions, and at some point, they wanted to help each other, but also had some selfish

reasons for the actions they were doing or wanted to do. Symbolism also helped a lot to figure

out the meaning of the room and the bird. The room was the representation of life, and as said

before the bird was a person trying to save someone. This poem would not be the same if the
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tone of it was different. Since this poem has a depressive tone, it helps the audience to identify

the situation in it. To summarize everything, we found that all the aspects like symbolism, tone,

and type of poem helped us to understand more the deep and meaningful meaning of this piece

of literature. It also learned a great life lesson of how sometimes is better to let others make their

own decisions, even when you “love” them, and is hard for you to just let them “leave” (Iran).
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Works Cited

Foundation, Poetry. “Little Bird by Stephen Ira.” Poetry Magazine, 31 Mar. 2023,

www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/148699/little-bird.

Ross, Angelica, et al.

www.thefilmcollaborative.org/films/img/epk/Press_Kit_Framing_Agnes_011222.pdf.

Accessed 29 Mar. 2023.

Schares, Evan Mitchell. “The Suicide of Leelah Alcorn: Whiteness in the Cultural Wake of

Dying Queers.” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, vol. 6, no. 1, 2019, p. 1,

https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.6.1.0001. Accessed 13 Jan. 2020.