The Poetry of Birds: edited by Simon Armitage and Tim Dee

Product Information

We envy them their ease of expression, as their song provides a bridge into the mysteries of a world the animal in us fondly half-remembers. As Tim Dee explains in his foreword; where more than one poem is included it is in the hope that the echoes in the poems give 'aghostly sense of birds through the human centuries’. The birds function as the poem's primary symbol, as they are both familiar yet different, present yet prone to metaphorical and literal flight. The Poetry of Birds is a rich and sustaining larder, a marvellously realised sourcebook of flights of feathered fancy.

Combining ornithological and literary history, this book is an important contribution to environmental history and ecocriticism, unpacking the complex relationships between human and other creatures and their shared environments. The Conference of the Birds, Penguin Classics, ISBN 0140444343 , re-edited as The Canticle of the Birds, Diane de Sellier Éditeur, 2013. We see birds ally themselves easily to desire in the Paul Muldoon's "Whim", where two lovers meet over a discussion of which is the superior translation of the poem "Cu Chulainn and the Birds of Appetite" (rendered by the narrator as the salty "How Cu Chuliann Got His End"). The selection, organised rather nattily by ornithological classification, encompasses Chaucer and Wordsworth, W? Valley of Unity, where the Wayfarer realizes that everything is connected and that the Beloved is beyond everything, including harmony, multiplicity, and eternity.Birds in Middle English Poetry contributes significantly to ecocritical, literary, and medieval studies. This fearless, eclectic debut harnesses the interrogative force of poetry, asking “What if we dare / to be / heard? Mary later described the circumstances that gave rise to the poem: ‘It was on a beautiful summer evening while wandering among the lanes whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark. Image (top): Skylark (alauda arvensis) by Neil Smith via Flickr; image (bottom): the windhover or common kestrel (author: Andreas Trepte), Wikimedia Commons.

A remarkable number of poets have noticed birds and British bird poetry is as old as British poetry. In these poems, human actions and perceptions are deeply affected by the remarkable flights and voices of birds. Birds, he argues, are relevant to the medieval mind because their unique properties align them with important religious and secular themes: seabirds that inspire the forlorn Anglo-Saxon pilgrim; unnamed species that confound riddling taxonomies; a belligerent owl who speaks out against unflattering literary portraits. Birds hold symbolic significance in many forms of literature, and in this haiku, the mention of a night heron adds depth to the imagery. On the way, many perish of thirst, heat or illness, while others fall prey to wild beasts, panic, and violence.The poems are set in acres of space which makes the reading experience pleasurable, as does the quality of the book design, right down to the striking red end papers. The hoopoe leads the birds, each of whom represents a human fault which prevents humankind from attaining enlightenment. Fariduddin Attar in Great Poets of Classical Persian" by R M Chopra, 2014, Sparrow Publication, Kolkata, ISBN 978-81-89140-75-5. While the swallow migrates, the bird that lives in the speaker's heart is constantly there, giving birth to new loves and obsessions all the while. They become a piercing motif for the grief we carry through life in Heaney's Blackbird of Glanmore"on the grass when I arrive / filling the stillness with life".