Feather & Bone

How could I resist a book titled Feather & Bone? In the wake of a horrific act of human violence, these poems meditate on daily violences in the natural world. Vultures circle, hungry birds plunge into windows, and an owl spends the night cutting up his victims. A stranger lurking in the shadows reminds the speaker that she is also prey to forces beyond her control. And yet, these are not poems of unrelenting despair, but a life-affirming celebration of the "thumping heart of it all." Braiding images of beauty and brutality, poet Kathleen Williamson finds music in the inevitable cruelties of survival.-Jackie Craven, author of Cyborg Sister, Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters, and others Part field guide, part confession, Kathleen Williamson's Feather & Bone studies human nature with the careful eye of an ornithologist. From brooding to migration, Williamson asks us to re-examine our relationship not only to the natural world but to the ties and traditions we dare call humanity. These poems are anything but hollow-boned, and yet, page after page, they take flight.-Stacey Balkun, author of Sweetbitter