The Bold News of Birdcalls

The meadowlark, belting his song from a post on this book's cover, is recognized across the country as a harbinger of spring. Enlivening the ambiance of this poetry collection, familiar birds represent the character and mood of its four sections: noisy jays, melodious wrens, steadfast robins, tranquil swans. While birds populate many of the poems, hardly more than a handful have birds as their subjects. The poems' subjects derive from wide-ranging personal experiences often narrated as dramatic situations, usually with something emotionally important at stake. Settings are urban and rural, delineated in finely tuned sensuous detail. Some poems are sonorously lyrical, others ironic or assertive. .

"Publication of Edward Morin's The Bold News of Birdcalls is good news not just for birders and other celebrants of the natural world, but for all poetry lovers. I love Ed Morin's sense of place; he is a real Michigan bard, and his evocation of many familiar Michigan places amounts to a North American version of what the Irish call Dinnṡeanċas, "place lore," the recitation of which is one of poetry's most ancient and revered obligations. All this is accomplished with human warmth and a rare sense of empathy."

- Richard Tillinghast, author of twelve books of poetry and five of creative nonfiction, most recently Journeys into the Mind of the World: A Book of Place.

"Birds flutter, feed, and swoop through these poems: motifs that knit together subjects as closely-observed as a decaying Hallowe'en pumpkin, armed robbery at a paint store where the speaker holds short-lived employment-a narrative that had my heart in my throat!-and elegies for early-passing friends, colleagues and poet-pals from the speaker's younger years as a university instructor. Academic politics of the corporate university also grip our attention, as does some professorial ogling! The unforgiving contrasts of northern Midwest weather serve both to warm and cool the tonalities of poems filled with self-questioning, forgiveness of others, and compelling human stories."

- Carolyne Wright, author of This Dream the World: New & Selected Poems, and lead editor of Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace

"Ed Morin's new collection of poetry continues his long, distinguished career of paying attention to the music of the world. While firmly grounded in the present, he looks back on the past, noticing all the small things that add up to a life. With a twinkle in his poet's eye, Morin maneuvers life's reversals with good humor and humility."

- Jim Daniels, author of Street Calligraphy, ten other poetry collections, and editor ofRespect: The Poetry of Detroit Music