Full Description
Selected by Maggie Smith for the 2023 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry, this debut collection of poems explores the aftermath of history's most powerful forces: devotion, disaster, and us.
Rooted in the Gulf Coast, A History of Half-Birds measures the line between love and ruin. Part poet, part anthropologist, Caroline Harper New digs into dark places—a cave, a womb, a hurricane—to trace how violence born of devotion manifests not only in our human relationships, but also in our connections to the natural and animal worlds. Everywhere in these pages, tenderness is coupled with brutality: a deer eats a baby bird, a lover restrains another. "I promised / a love poem," New proclaims, then teaches us about the anglerfish, how it "attracts its mate / and prey with the same lure."
In New's exceptional voice, familiar concepts take on a shade of the fantastic. A woman tastes the earth for acidity, buries lemons and pennies for balance. Limestone "sucks the sea / into little demitasse" and hyacinths "sip the sun / black." A lone elephant wanders into the wilderness of rural Georgia, never to be seen again. But perhaps most arresting about New's work are the truths told by its strangeness, like the ancient fish who "carved their shape" in a mountain's peak, or a mother who wears a lifejacket in the bathtub.
Crafted by New's voracious mind and carried by her matchless lyricism, A History of Half-Birds is a stunning investigation of love's beastly impulses—all it protects, and all it destroys.
Contents
CONTENTS
PART I
WIDDERSHINS
The Elephant Mother XXX
Widdershins XXX
The Archaeology Magazine XXX
Garden of Eve XXX
Management of the Living XXX
Fieldnotes on Cape San Blas XXX
Auguries by Mouth XXX
Ekphrasis XXX
Fieldnotes on Carrying XXX
Driving Through Dunedin XXX
PART II
PARLOR TRICKS
Notes on Devotion XXX
The Bathtub XXX
If We Move Back in Together XXX
Fieldnotes on Hydrangeas XXX
Interview With a Cervidologist XXX
Etymology of Chlorophyll XXX
Patients Regain Song Before Speech XXX
If We Stage the Wizard of Oz With Alligators XXX
Fieldnotes on Juniper XXX
The Sargassum Fish XXX
My Ancestors in South Carolina XXX
Fieldnotes on the Bloodmoon XXX
Ereshkigal, Our Sinkhole Sister XXX
Love Poem for My Bird Dog XXX
PART III
HYPOTHETICAL MOONS
Moon Song for My Mother XXX
Searching for Amelia (I) XXX
Fieldnotes on the Red-Bellied Woodpecker XXX
The Women of Weeki Wachee XXX
Searching for Amelia (II) XXX
Parlor Tricks XXX
Fieldnotes on Red XXX
The Bioluminescent Bays of Vieques XXX
Fieldnotes on Hypothetical Moons XXX
Searching for Amelia (III) XXX
Elk Lake XXX
The Loon's Solid Bones Help Her Sink XXX
Notes XXX
Gratitude XXX
