The Bird / Poem Book: Poems on the Wild Birds of North America.

by Hayden Carruth (Editor), Mel Hunter (Illustrator)

Book by

Genres: Poetry

51 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Hayden Carruth was an American poet, literary critic, and anthologist known for his distinctive voice, blending formal precision with the rhythms of jazz and the blues. Over a career spanning more than sixty years, he published over thirty books of poetry, as well as essays, literary criticism, and anthologies. His work often explored themes of rural life, hardship, mental illness, and social justice, reflecting both his personal struggles and his political convictions.
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Carruth studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago. His early career included serving as editor-in-chief of Poetry and as an advisory editor of The Hudson Review for two decades. He later became poetry editor at Harper’s Magazine and held teaching positions at Johnson State College, the University of Vermont, and Syracuse University, where he influenced a new generation of poets.
Carruth received numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Collected Shorter Poems (1992) and the National Book Award for Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey (1996). His later works, such as Doctor Jazz and Last Poems, further cemented his reputation as a major voice in American poetry. His influential anthology The Voice That Is Great Within Us remains a landmark collection of American verse.

Reviews

[Ry · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, but rounded down to 3 because the editor of the collection included one of his own poems in the book lol

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

the best poem was one by Carruth - the rest felt like they were merely put there for the mention of a bird in the poem.

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hayden Carruth, ed., The Bird/Poem Book (McCalls, 1970)

First and foremost, please note the ed. after the name Hayden Carruth. Why? Because it stands for "editor." Online booksellers (and libraries) who list a book as being by, instead of edited by, a particular author set people up for disappointment, especially if it's a book that's been out of print for decades and the person has been tracking it down for years.

The Bird/Poem Book suffers from the same major problem as most anthologies of its type; there simply aren't enough quality poems written on any very specific topic to come up with a top-quality anthology of that sort. And this one was very specific; poems about birds, but that don't pretend to be about anything BUT birds. (In other words, no Gerard Manley Hopkins' wonderful "Windhover" here, which would have increased the quality of the collection tremendously.) And, really, the only poem that lives up to the quality one would hope for from an anthology that is so small (one assumes they kept it to slightly over fifty pages because they couldn't find enough of quality) is Carruth's own piece. Note that being up to the quality hoped for from an anthology of this sort is not the same as being up to Carruth's usual quality (this is decidedly inferior to many of the pieces in Asphalt Georgics, Collected Shorter Poems, etc). The rest of the collection ranges from the good and famous (Whitman) to the overrated, awful, and famous (Emily Dickinson, with yet another poem that can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas"). Included are a number of now-obscure poets of various quality; some of them it seems a crime to have let fade into oblivion, but that could well be the company they're keeping here; for all we know, they sucked.

I'm sure that my disappointment in finding this not to be a Carruth book, as advertised in multiple places, affected my rating. But such is life. Now, Amazon, and Lakewood Public Library, please, strive for accuracy in reporting. **