Strange Birds, Paperback/Victor Altshul

Descriere

Description Strange Birds is a marvelous book of poems. The author is not afraid to offer up his own vulnerabilities so that the reader may gain insight into the human condition. It is human nature to want to keep what is wonderful with us, as Victor Altshul demonstrates so vividly, with verve and humor, in his poem "The Trouble with Mount Terrible." Yet we also keep with us our insecurities and feelings of guilt, our convoluted memories of what went wrong, as Altshul shows in poems about his schizophrenic brother and about a young man deemed healthy enough to send off to the Vietnam war. "I'd sent the young man continents away. / His terror ended on the second day." In another poem a reticent farmer is so completely filled with his losses that his lungs and heart begin to shrivel--to make room for what the man cannot say, but must carry. As the pelican featured in one of the poems is able to scoop up fish and drain the water away from his catch before swallowing, Victor Altshul captures moments in a life, drains away what's inconsequential, and uses what's left to give us a taste of humanity.