Rara Avis - Softcover

Falconer, Blas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1961897024 ISBN 13: 9781961897021

Publisher: Four Way Books, 2024

Synopsis

Regally bearing its Latin title, Rara Avis captures in sparse, moving verse both the splendor and the loneliness of what it means to be exceptional -- a rarified specimen, a strange bird. A son, a husband, and now a father, seasoned poet Blas Falconer explores the relationships among men -- between peers, lovers, parents and children -- to consider and question existing models of authority and power. Falconer's lucid but feeling gaze reveals social complexities with searing and graceful imagery, asking what it means to live outside the heteronormative experience while existing as a man, simultaneously a casualty and a participant in the project of masculinity.

These poems carefully delineate the casual cruelties of queer youth and the beautiful and bitter revelations of adulthood. The wisdom propelling Rara Avis is the knowledge that we are each of us that rare bird; we share our singularity. Everyone has a pancreas, but only one organ matters when Falconer learns his father is afflicted. Alchemized by love, one thing, unlike any other, becomes all things. "All day, everything, / no matter how / small, makes me // think of it" ... The bee / crawling in / blossoms // scattered on / the glass/tabletop. The sound of // a pitcher fill- / ing slowly / with water."

About this title

About the Author

Blas Falconer is the author of Forgive the Body This Failure, The Foundling Wheel, and A Question of Gravity and Light as well as the coeditor of two anthologies, Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets and The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity. The recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, he teaches in San Diego State University's MFA program and is the editor in chief at Poetry International Online.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Rara Avis

A falcon, one of millions raised 
for sacrifice. An X-ray

reveals the bird, un-tombed, 
wrapped in linen, wings pressed

the length of its ghostly body. 
Force-fed mice, sparrows, it couldn’t

expel the bones, the claws,
and died having eaten too much,

the stomach packed: feather and 
fur, tail descending the throat.

One of many bred to brave 
the dark with its king, beyond

appetite, nothing left
to crave, thus, heavenly, saved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Four Way Books
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1961897024
• ISBN 13: 9781961897021
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80