On Wings of Song : Poems About Birds

From Emily Dickinson's reflections on the jay to Seamus Heaney's celebration of the turkey, a collection of avian poems pays tribute to the amazing world of birds in works by Gertrude Stein, Chaucer, Tennyson, Ted Hughes, Amy Clampitt, John Updike, Po ChuI, W. B. Yeats, Virgil, Edward Lear, Sylvia Plath, and other poets from around the world. 12,500 first printing.

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.