On Wings of Song - (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets) by J D McClatchy (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Excellent. . . . [Disch's] greatest work-a writer's writer's success." --"The Village Voice
"A robust writer . . . a virtuoso." --"The "New York Times Book Review
"Startlingly original. . . . A cause for jubilation." --Harlan Ellison
"A superb book." "--Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
"One of the most remarkably talented writers around." --"The Washington Post Book World
" Big, solid and immensely enjoyable." --David Pringle, "Science Fiction: The Best 100 Novels

About the Author

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.