On Wings of Song: Poems about Birds - Hardcover

by J. D. McClatchy (Editor)

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 Ch -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.

Front Jacket

This classic, award-winning novel was included in Harold Bloom's "The Western Canon as a work likely to be cherished by future scholars, and in David Pringle's "Science Fiction: The Best 100 Novels. It treats one of mankind's most persistent fantasies as a criminal offense.
Flying--it is a transcendental state, the highest exaltation of the soul, paradise itself, and it can be achieved simply by singing a song. But it is also illegal, at least in the state of Iowa, where everything's rationed, where people live in fortress-villages, and where Daniel Weinreb, intrepid native and incorrigible teen, does a stint in prison for having secretly delivered copies of the "Star-Tribune, the immoral daily from the infidel state of Minnesota. While in prison, he is advised by an inmate that if he wants to fly, he must make a mess of his life, and upon release, that is exactly what he does. For Daniel finds that he will do "anything in order to fly.

Author Biography

J. D. McClatchy is the author of five collections of poems: Scenes From Another Life, Stars Principal, The Rest of the Way, Ten Commandments, and Hazmat. He has also written two books of essays: White Paper and Twenty Questions. He has edited many other books, including The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, Poets on Painters, and Horace: The Odes. In addition, he edits The Voice of the Poet series for Random House AudioBooks, and has written seven opera libretti. He is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has taught at Princeton, UCLA, and Johns Hopkins, and is now a professor at Yale, where since 1991 he has edited The Yale Review. He lives in Stonington, Connecticut.