On Wings of Song

CF956C22-D5FB-4446-B0A7-929093E17E24
CF956C22-D5FB-4446-B0A7-929093E17E24
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On Wings of Song

$14.95

POEMS ABOUT BIRDS

Favorite Poem: Bird-Language by W. H. Auden

Trying to understand the words

Uttered on all sides by birds,

I recognize in what I hear

Noises that betoken fear.

Though some of them, I’m certain, must

Stand for rage, bravado, lust,

All other notes that birds employ

Sound like synonyms for joy.

From the publisher: From backyard to barnyard, from hawks to hummingbirds, from pelicans to peacocks, from Coleridge’s albatross to Keats’s nightingale to Poe’s raven-all manner of feathered beings, the inspiration for poetic flights of fancy through the ages, are gathered together in this delightful volume.

Some of the winged treasures: Emily Dickinson on the jay; Gertrude Stein on pigeons; Seamus Heaney on turkeys; Tennyson on the eagle; Spenser on the merry cuckoo; Amy Clampitt on the whippoorwill; Po Chü-i on cranes; John Updike on seagulls; W.S. Merwin on the duck; Elizabeth Bishop on the sandpiper; Rilke on flamingoes; Margaret Atwood on vultures; the Bible on the ostrich; Sylvia Plath on the owl; Melville on the hawk; Yeats on wild swans; Virgil on the harpies; Thomas Hardy on the darkling thrush; and Wallace Stevens on thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird.

Compact dimensions: 4.25 x 6.25 in

Hardcover

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