Utilizing the short lyric poem in long sequence, Songbird addresses matters both urgent and ancient: what it is to grow from a child into an adult, how to remain inside one's body, what it means to open the mouth and sing. Guided by the images, senses, and sounds provided to her by the natural world, the poet invents a stuttering natal language to approach the unsayable aspects of interior life. In doing so, the poems collectively trouble the binaries that beset modern existence: the simultaneous push-pull of sexual desire; the interior and exterior landscapes that shape our perceptual fields; the reckoning of violence with beauty; the human need for both permanency and flight. Songbird is a daring and necessary book.

[sample poem]

let me take something small

between my teeth

piece of straw meant to signify your body

which was given freely to me or threads of me

that are wheat strands always these small barters

for a price would I give you the edge that is

your absence for my presence and you between my teeth

for the price of grass the price of all grasses

so say I to you in prayer I would

swallow whole what gave you in part

CAROL ANN DAVIS is a poet, essayist, and author of the poetry collections Psalm (2007) and Atlas Hour (2011), and a collection of essays, The Nail in the Tree (2020). A former longtime editor of the literary journal Crazyhorse, she is Professor of English at Fairfield University, where she is Director of the Low-Residency MFA and founding director of Poetry in Communities, an initiative that provides poetry curricula to communities hit by sudden or systemic violence. An NEA Fellow in Poetry, Carol Ann has read her work at the Library of Congress, Poets House, on the website of the PBS NewsHour, and at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival. Her work regularly appears in literary magazines and periodicals, including The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The Georgia Review, Image, The Gettysburg Review, The American Poetry Review, and Agni.