Wrecks

by Erin L. McCoy

120 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2025

Reviews

[Paula Rae · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read a poetry book like this. The poems themselves are beautiful, full of imagery and emotion, lyrically perfect. But there is so much more here. McCoy has taken the true story of the Great Auk and its extinction to create a narrative of its life and its death, told through the eyes of the sailors who hunted her, along with their children and wives, the researchers who studied the auk, and the indigenous people of Canada who simultaneously hunted the auk for its feathers and spiritualized it. And there is also the witch-auk of McCoy’s imagination, who we follow on a journey across the United States. By the last poems, as we see the last of the auk, I was moved to tears. Read this slowly, take it in a bit at a time, and you will discover the genius of this book—while learning much more than you ever expected about natural snd human history.