Bright Wings : An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds »

Enjoying a popularity unheard of for most poets, Billy Collins has had a remarkable late-life surge, aided by NPR exposure and his 2001 and 2002 appointments as the U.S. poet laureate. His style is engaging, conversational, funny, and surprising.

Poet laureate Billy Collins joins David Sibley, America's foremost bird illustrator, to celebrate the singular muse that has inspired so much poetry since the invention of the form. From Catullus and Chaucer to Robert Browning and James Wright, birds have served as a powerful metaphor for beauty, escape, transcendence, and song, expressing and embodying a poet's deepest longings and ineffable desires. Birds are, in effect, longtime collaborators of the poet's art.

In this irresistible anthology, more than one hundred poems by poets throughout history are combined with sixty original illustrations in ornithological detail. Part poetry collection, part field guide, this work will appeal to readers who enjoy poetry and appreciate a visual interpretation of verse, and it will attract nature lovers who value a richer understanding of their objects of study. Carefully selected and species-specific, these poems and pictures enhance our experience with the "bright wings" that surround us.

Poets include: Elizabeth Bishop • Robert Browning • Catullus • Amy Clampitt • William Cowper • Linda Gregg • Eamon Grennan • Brenda Hillman • Thomas Hardy • Seamus Heaney • John Hollander • Kathleen Jamie • John Keats • Howard Nemerov • Mary Oliver • Sylvia Plath • Delmore Schwartz • Charles Simic • Wallace Stevens • Anne Stevenson • Henry David Thoreau • John Updike • Robert Penn Warren • Richard Wilbur • William Carlos Williams