When we were birds : poems /

When we were birds : poems /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Wilkins, Joe, author.
Uniform title:Poems. Selections
Imprint:Fayetteville : The University of Arkansas Press, 2016.
©2016
Description:1 online resource
Language:English
Series:Miller Williams poetry series
Subject:
American poetry -- 21st century.
American poetry.
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12588667
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9781610755832
1610755839
9781557286970
1557286973
Notes:Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed January 4, 2016).
Summary:In When We Were Birds, Joe Wilkins wrestles his attention away from the griefs, deprivations, and high prairies of his Montana childhood and turns toward "the bean-rusted fields and gutted factories of the Midwest," toward ordinary injustice and everyday sadness, toward the imminent birth of his son and his own confusions in taking up the mantle of fatherhood, toward faith and grace, legacy and luck. A panoply of voices are at play--the escaped convict, the late-night convenience store clerk, and the drowned child all have their say--and as this motley chorus rises and crests, we begin to understand something of what binds us and makes us human: while the world invariably breaks all our hearts, Wilkins insists that is the very "place / hope lives, in the breaking." Within a notable range of form, concern, and voice, the poems here never fail to sing. Whether praiseful or interrogating, When We Were Birds is a book of flight, light, and song. "When we were birds," Wilkins begins, "we veered & wheeled, we flapped & looped-- / it's true, we flew."
Awards:"2016 finalist Miller Williams poetry prize"--Cover.
Table of Contents:
  • Series Editor's Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • My Son Asks for the Story about When We Were Birds
  • I
  • Eat Stone and Go On
  • Note to My Unborn Son concerning Quickening
  • Ragged Point Road
  • An Ode for Leaving the Place You Call Home
  • Leviathan
  • The Day We Finish Painting the Bedroom, My Wife's Father E-mails Us His Suicide Note
  • Note to My Son concerning Our First Birthing Class
  • Complaint with the Turning of the Season & Shined Shoes
  • Drought
  • The Gospel according to Kelly, Night Shift Manager, Forest City Fuel & Foods
  • II
  • Note to My Unborn Son concerning Manufacturing Economics and Courage
  • J & W Redemption, Highway 9, North Iowa
  • With the Kisses of Many
  • Today, the Neighbor Girl Wore a Blue Dress, and Her Doll Was Naughty at Tea
  • Note to My Unborn Son concerning the Fundamental Project of Democracy
  • Fishcutter
  • Me & Mississippi
  • Littlelight
  • Prairie Race Relations, Lodge Grass, One Sunday Afternoon
  • Like Bread the Light
  • III
  • Note to My Unborn Son concerning Winter, Grief, & Spring
  • Poem thinning out into prayer
  • Anyone who has eyes for seeing should see
  • The Can Picker, 1st & Cowls
  • Note to My Unborn Son concerning the Peculiarities of Faith
  • Caddo River Elegy
  • Encomium, Driving Highway 49 South
  • Note to My Unborn Son concerning the Second Law of Thermodynamics
  • Absence
  • Note to My Unborn Son concerning Time, Fear, and Impending Fatherhood
  • The Garage Sale Daze Meditations
  • Note to My Unborn Son concerning Canadian Folk Music
  • IV
  • Six Days' Lament
  • Each Word Holds the World
  • Complaint with Exhaustion & Amateur Theology
  • Colic
  • Missouri River
  • A Story We Might Follow
  • Complaint with Parking Lot Vegetable Stand & Child's Cry
  • Complaint with Drought and Economic Downturn
  • Arguing with James Baldwin the Day after the Reelection of Barack Obama.
  • The Spirit Entering as Midnight Wind
  • Wish
  • Ragged Point Road
  • "Where Was I before I Was Born?"
  • V
  • Eight Letters of Explanation, Acknowledgment, & Apology on the Occasion of My Son's First Birthday.

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