The Poetry of Birds - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670916412 ISBN 13: 9780670916412

Publisher: Viking, 2009

Synopsis

Birds are the most obvious wild things we have around us. They are much watched and much loved, not least by poets.

Bird poetry is as old as British poetry itself, and a remarkable number of poets have written poems about birds. Indeed some of the most famous poems in the language concern birds, from Keats's nightingale and Shelley's skylark to Yeats's swans and Hardy's thrush.

In this wonderful anthology poet Simon Armitage and birdwatching enthusiast Tim Dee gather together the best of the past and the present, including those famous poems but also many overlooked gems. And in a fascinating divergence from standard anthology practice, the poems are organized according to ornithological classification, beginning with poems by Marianne Moore and David Wright on the ostrich and the emperor penguin and ending with Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens on the oriole and the blackbird.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

" 'Hope' is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -"

'A glorious collection of works old and new. Arranged by ornithological species, it helpfully features a section of notes giving further information about the birds mentioned' Independent on Sunday

'Powerful. A rich and sustaining larder, a marvellously realized sourcebook of flights of feathered fancy' Guardian

'Compendious . . . offers many pleasures' Daily Express

'The poems gathered here celebrate our tenuous connection to something timeless and sublime. A truly inexhaustible collection . . . to be read again and again' Daily Mail

'Some of the most ethereal verse ever written' Sunday Telegraph

'A wonderful, generous anthology. A life-affirming celebration of the commonplace yet enduringly mysterious creatures we share this world with and the poetry they have inspired Daily Telegraph

'Had me entranced' Observer

About the Author:

Simon Armitage's Selected Poems appeared in 2001, and in 2007 he published a highly praised translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He has written two volumes of memoir about living in the north for Penguin: All Points North and Gig. He lives in Huddersfield.
Tim Dee is a BBC radio producer based in Bristol. He has written The Running Sky, a memoir of his birdwatching life.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0670916412
• ISBN 13: 9780670916412
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Simon Armitage, Tim Dee