想像與再思白樺樹：從植物研究觀點閱讀佛洛斯特詩作〈白樺樹〉及其圖像演繹

Imagining and Re-imagining Birches: A Botanical Reading of Robert Frost’s“Birches”and Its Pictorial Interpretations for Young People

詩人佛洛斯特在美國中小學受封為詩人代表，詩作經常收錄於兒童文學選集，〈白樺樹〉即為一例。這首詩歌尚有兩種圖畫形式演繹，分別是美籍華裔插畫家暨凱迪克獎得主楊志成之詩歌圖畫書《白樺樹》（1988）以及加拿大漫畫家朱利安．皮特斯於《看見詩》（2020）書中的漫畫新詮。本文援引由約翰．查爾斯．萊恩倡議之「植物研究」觀點以及圖畫書、漫畫相關概念析論上述三份文本，探討詩人、插畫家、漫畫家在共同聚焦白樺樹之際，如何透過不同創作媒介，參與、介入、並想像白樺樹的植物生命。本文主張：「植物研究」因關注植物的行為及認知層面，俾助我們重新體認白樺樹亦具有感知，而且其樹形、靈性與智慧，也會融入創作者的想像之中。此外，三位創作者針對同一詩作，透過文字、圖畫書、詩歌漫畫等三種不同媒介，不約而同激發和促進對於白樺樹充滿靈感的重新構想。原作對於植物認知的詩意描繪，已將白樺樹刻畫為具感知力的生命體，並展現詩人對植物的想像；圖像版的詩歌新詮，則益突顯植物的真實性、主體性、和連續敘事，從而促進我們對於植物世界更具生命力的想像與再思，使其愈發有意義。

With Robert Frost recognized as the official poet of American schools, his poems are widely circulated in children’s literature. Among the poet’s most iconic poems,“Birches”is often introduced to children. In addition to Frost’s original poem, there are two pictorial renderings, including Birches (1988), a so-called poetry picture book painted by Ed Young, an acclaimed Chinese-American illustrator and Caldecott Medalist, and the comic strip adaptation of the namesake poem by Canadian comic artist Julian Peters in Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry (2020). All three texts are scrutinized in this paper. Drawing from phytocriticism, a branch of critical plant study proposed by John Charles Ryan, as well as concepts from picture book theory and comics studies, this paper explores how the versifier, the painter, and the comic book illustrator, through various media but concerted focus on the plant, engage with, mediate, and imagine the botanical life of birches in three versions of the poem“Birches”. The paper argues that phytocriticism, with its slant on aspects of behavior and cognition in the plant world, brings us to a new understanding of birch as a percipient being, insinuating its body, soul, and wisdom into the creators’imaginings. Robert Frost, Ed Young, and Julian Peters, while depicting birches in different poetic forms, altogether present a modality for galvanizing the progressive imagining and re-imagining of the vegetal world. Frost’s poeticized depiction of plant cognition presents plants as sentient beings, highlighting botanical imagination, whereas the pictorial revisions re-imagine the poem by emphasizing botanical truths, subjectivity, and sequential storytelling, thus facilitating an inspirited re-envisioning of birches and rendering them significant.