02018cam a2200277 i 4500 611256367 TxAuBib 20230206120000.0 221118s2022||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 9781930630994 PAP 14.95 1930630999 PAP 14.95 TxAuBib rda Longley, Michael. The slain birds [BOOK] / Michael Longley. First North American edition. Winston-Salem, NC : Wake Forest University Press, 2022. 76 pages ; 23 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Michael Longley’s new collection takes its title from Dylan Thomas—“for the sake of the souls of the slain birds sailing.” The Slain Birds encompasses souls, slayings, and many birds, both dead and alive. The first poem laments a tawny owl killed by a car. That owl reappears later in “Totem,” which represents the book itself as “a star-surrounded totem pole/ With carvings of all the creatures.” “Slain birds” exemplify our impact on the creatures and the planet. But, in this book’s cosmic ecological scheme, birds are predators too, and coronavirus is “the merlin we cannot see.” Longley’s soul-landscape seems increasingly haunted by death, as he revisits the Great War, the Holocaust, and Homeric bloodshed, with their implied counterparts today. Yet his microcosmic Carrigskeewaun remains a precarious “home” for the human family. It engenders “Otter-sightings, elvers, leverets, poetry.” Among Longley’s images for poetry are crafts that conserve or recycle natural materials—carving, silversmithing, woodturning, embroidery—suggesting the versatility with which he remakes his own art. Provided by publisher. 20230206. Death Poetry. Birds Poetry. Poetry.