What Bird are You by Amy Bobeda

$20.99

 

Dogs begin to bark. It’s the coldest night of February. The snow begins to howl. I’ve been reading Percy Bysshe Shelley, and this new collection by Amy Bobeda which displays such an implacable love for life & the biosphere. The way she speaks the syntax of myth, how she recognizes birds as inscrutable people who vanish into their own lives & deaths. Isn’t it said humans first got poetry from listening to the whistle of migratory flocks? Amy Bobeda constructs rich colloquial poems, substantial as a clay pot, multi-hued as the lyric of a songbird. She reaches back, back, back, past the trees, past the city streets—till you see things you never knew before. Shelley wrote, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?“ From the canyons of howling snow, with her book in hand I look straight into the valley of birds.  Read these poems—

–Andrew Schelling, The Jack Kerouac School, author of The Facts at Dog Tank Spring

 

 

 

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Description

What Bird are You

by Amy Bobeda

$20.99, Full-length, paper

979-8-88838-216-5

2023

I’ve never seen a bird that hasn’t made me want to live. When the first humans were born of clay, what bird did they become? Some of the most beloved origin stories are rooted in the realm of clay and birds. What Bird Are You? is a murmuration of bird song mapping Ohlone lands of the Pajaro Valley, famous birds of New York’s Central and Prospect Parks, the Acoma Reservation, and daily life in Colorado’s first “Bird City” through the ancient and modern arts of pottery and birdwatching. This collection of essays and poems explores what it means to live as a writer caught between the world of potters and the world of birds. Through mythology, memory, late-capitalism, and history this collection sculpts a poet’s life out of a lump of clay and feathers.

Amy Bobeda holds an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where she serves as the Director of the Naropa Writing Center. She sometimes teaches writing pedagogy and process-based art. She’s the founder of Wisdom Body Collective, a process-based artist collective and small press. She’s the author and illustrator of Red Memory (FlowerSong Press) mi sin manitos (Ethel Press) and has a forthcoming book from Spuyten Duyvil. Her work has been featured in Columbia Review, Ecotheo Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She’s also a retired cosmetologist and costume designer who loves reclaiming and refashioning fiber arts. Raised on the Amah Mutsun land of the Pajaro Valley by two ceramicists she is often found running, walking, and following birds in landlocked places.

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