In addition to true love’s kiss, praise of one’s native land, and longing for one’s absent beloved, birds have long been the one of the most popular subjects for poetry. From Catullus’ sparrow through Poe’s raven, birds have been admired, envied, questioned, debated, tasked, consulted, and meditated upon in verse for centuries. The reasons for this are not hard to comprehend – most birds can do the one thing humans cannot but dearly wish they could: fly. From this mankind has traditionally inferred them to possess absolute freedom and endowed them with all the powers such a miraculous state of being is assumed to bestow. However in the modern world, just as the style of verse has changed dramatically, so have the uses of its traditional metaphors and imagery. Romanticism has been replaced by an unvarnished realism. In Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds, verse reflecting both the old and the new poetic understanding and inclusion of birds has been collected and is presented in conjunction with contemporary illustrations of the avian world to both entertain as well as inspire the reader to deeper consideration of just what role these marvelous creatures now play in our collective literary imagination. Read the rest of this entry »

PowellsBooks.Blog blogger Jill Owens has recently published her extensive and insightful interview with David Sibley. In their discussion, Mr. Sibley discusses at length his latest book, The Sibley Guide to Trees, as well as his thoughts about some other notable recent publications, including one of my own favorites, Jonathan Rosen’s The Life of the Skies.