The Bird Catcher [Hardcover]

Marie Ponsot (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 1998

In 1998, Marie Ponsot was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, confirming the praise that has been bestowed on her by critics and peers--among them Eavan Boland and Carolyn Kizer (who are quoted on the back of the book jacket) and Amy Clampitt, who had this to say of Ponsot's last book: "She is marvelously attuned to the visual and to the audible. She is no less precisely a geographer of the interior life, above all the experience of being a woman."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Marie Ponsot is a subtle, delicate, and yet oddly assertive poet. Again and again in The Bird Catcher, she approaches experience with a kind of reasonable trepidation. Yet she always does what is necessary--as protagonist and poet--to elicit a spiritual insight. Braving the elements seems to be second nature to her. And in this volume, she's consumed by one element in particular: water. In "Separate in the Swim," for example, she can't resist the ocean's allure, despite her terror of "the aim of wave, the idea / that picks up the water / and throws it at the shore." Yet this terror is also a prelude to a vision of oneness:

Each stroke starts a far drumming
clumping the kelp, helping
shells and rubbish decay into sand.

In this stretch of the Atlantic
the whole Atlantic operates.

As I ride, its broad cast evokes
my tiny unity, a pod, a person.

Thanks to the closure of skin
I'm forking the tune I'm part of
though my part is played moving
on a different instrument.

In every poem in the collection, Marie Ponsot functions as an explorer, relentlessly mapping one piece of terra incognita after another. A linguistic delight, The Bird Catcher is also an invitation to voyage into the inner and outer wilderness. --Mark Rudman

From Library Journal

It's been ten years since Ponsot's last work, The Green Dark, which is too long a wait. Her beautifully condensed poems should be sampled every day. Their gorgeous simplicity is, in a way, deceptive; beneath the surface these poems are tough, intellecutally rigorous, controlled without being reductive. Ponsot can break your heart or change your mind with a single phrase and make it all look so easy. No wonder she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for this book.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 91 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (February 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375401350
• ISBN-13: 978-0375401350
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,137,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a poet of the first magnitude, September 22, 2006

By 

Dorothy Parker's aunt - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bird Catcher (Paperback)

Any critical reader of poetry will understand Marie Ponsot's importance as a leading poet of our time. A modernist in the sense of being playful and self-aware, she is also a traditionalist whose footing in classical literature allows her to dance in extraordinary (and catchy) rhymes and rhythms. The Bird Catcher is one of the best collections of poetry by any poet, ever.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, April 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Bird Catcher (Paperback)

The Bird Catcher was a strong collection by Marie Ponsot, that contains subtle beauty intertwined with a strong presence of the self. Marie Ponsot has a unique voice, though there are elements of Phillip Levine's poignancy in her poems.