Birds Like Us, by Joan D. Cooper

Price includes shipping costs to the continental United States. Autograph and inscription available. Simply write this in the notes section, and let us know the name of the person for whom you'd like the book inscribed. Praise for Birds Like Me: In this impressive debut collection of poems, Birds Like Me, novelist Joan Drescher Cooper proves to be as adept in verse as she is in prose. Cooper’s musical lyrics arise from the narrative ground to transcend the daily quotidian as gracefully as Shakespeare’s lark …arising/From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate… –Nancy Mitchell– recipient of a Pushcart Prize in Poetry, author of The Near Surround, Grief Hut and The Out-of-Body Shop Joan Drescher Cooper is a compassionate wise woman whose collision with family dynamics explodes off the page with an insistent search for meaning. She teaches us to respect the comings and goings of our daily drills. If poetry is about turning the physical into the metaphysical, she has the knack. In the very first poem, I loved the line – “Night sweeps color into its pocket.” –Gerald Sweeney—reviewer and author of the The Columbiad series including Comes the Electric Circus, Eagles Rising, First Lights, Crashing into Sunrise, A Tournament of a Distinguished White Order, Yo Columbia! and Wizard Ho! Birds Like Me collects odd moments of clarity found on dog walks and long drives, while working with students, and even while shopping for groceries. Like snapshots from a working mother’s life, the poems spring from conversations, fragments of memory, sudden lightning strokes of ideas, or snippets from longer stories. Maryland’s Eastern Shore offers the settings of Assateague Island, sleepy rivers, country roads, the Chesapeake Bay, and Ocean City’s inlet. Bared to full exposure, poetry also hides in the shadows waiting for release. Each piece is all truth and utter lies.