Warble - (The Birdy Poetry Prize) by Alicia Rebecca Myers (Paperback)

About the Book

Rich with metaphor, Myers captures the full range of human emotion as the poems process taking care of one aging parent in the wake of losing the other. These poems examine what it means to be a daughter and a mother in modern-day America.

Book Synopsis

The poems in Alicia Rebecca Myers's debut collection explore a fascination with the phenomena within and beyond a person - whether becoming a mother or observing a sea turtle migration. The language is rich with metaphor but conversational and direct, with a compelling balance between prose and lineated poems. Myers finds in the everyday, in oxidized pesto and a crepe paper streamer, new ways of expressing shared experiences. She captures the full range of human emotion - sadness, grief, humor, and overarching love - as the poems process taking care of one aging parent in the wake of losing the other. Warble also contextualizes what it means to be a daughter and a mother in modern-day America by offering snapshots of pop culture and the wider American experience, from Love Is Blind to gun violence. This is a book that asks of us, "In a lifetime, what do we keep, and what do we release? What sings on beyond our time, and how are we immortalized by that music?"

Review Quotes

Warble encompasses the poetry of connection to the life force, weaving and unraveling immersions into grief and birth, presence and yearning, mother love and father loss, blossom and flight. These poems are compelling, brave, intimate, and most of all, unafraid of telling the truth. I found that once I started reading them, I couldn't stop, and I was called back to re-read many stunning dives into the tender and fierce edges of life, such as the complex compassion in "Addling," the daring energy in "Open Water," and the breathless love of "You Ask Me to Tell You the Story." The title itself-Warble-speaks to that in-between state (as well as a bird) of being alive, trilling through each poem.

I picked this collection because of how deeply the poet wrote from what Edward Hirsch calls "the poetry of affection," the poetry that connect us to our innate and vulnerable humanness. This quality is so vital when it comes to working with the fragments of brokenness, despair, and horror around us to craft a life, sustain a community, and behold the living earth with wonder and courage.

-Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, 2024 Birdy Poetry Prize Judge, author of How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems