The True Account of Myself as a Bird

by Robert Wrigley

From an award-winning poet, a new collection that endeavors to pass along what the things of the earth are telling us

Over the course of his career Robert Wrigley has won acclaim for the emotional toughness, sonic richness, and lucid style of his poems, and for his ability to fuse narrative and lyrical impulses. In his new collection, Wrigley means to use poetry to capture the primal conversation between human beings and the perilously threatened planet on which they love and live, proceeding from a line from “All we are not stares back at what we are.” In language that is both elegiac and playful, declarative and yet ringingly musical; in traditional sonnets, quatrains, and free verse, Wrigley transcribes the consciousness and significance of every singing thing—in order to sing back.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published June 14, 2022

About the author

Robert Wrigley is the author of seven books of poetry, including, most recently, Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems (Penguin, 2006); Lives of the Animals (Penguin, 2003), winner of the 2005 Poets Prize; and Reign of Snakes (Penguin, 1999), winner of the 2000 Kingsley Tufts Award in Poetry. His book, In the Bank of Beautiful Sins (Penguin, 1995) won the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award, and his poems have appeared in many periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, and The American Poetry Review. His poems have been reprinted twice in the Best American Poetry anthologies, and five times in the Pushcart Prize collections. Recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Idaho Commission on the Arts, Wrigley is Professor of English and teaches in the MFA Program in Writing at the University of Idaho. He lives in the woods near Moscow, Idaho, with his wife, the writer Kim Barnes. "

Reviews

[Alex Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wrigley's book is remarkable for several things. Most important to me is the fact that his poetry is so accessible to readers. It is difficult to read the first stanza and then stop reading. He brings you into a story about a man who spends time in the woods, deeply immersed in nature, attuned to it in a way a human would ordinarily dismiss. He opens a way to a deeper connection that is worth contemplating. He writes about his life with a sense of wry humor and fresh phrases. His style is free and playful. It's honest. Unpretentious. I will be reading some of his other books. He is a poet who draws me into the genre, an unexpected gift.