Paper Bird

'"Paper Bird" is the 1987 winner of the Edith Shiffert Prize in Poetry in the AWP Award Series. The poems of Robin Behn's superb first collection, "Paper Bird", exhibit a lyric ease matched only by their startling power. There is a richness here, a charge and physicality, that is rare in recent American poetry. Whether writing poems of the family constellation or elegies for those lost, both in and out of love, Robin Behn allows her voice to sail out along the currents of the heart, and each of her songs is accompanied by the rhythm of wings - bird's, an angel's, or even death's - it rises from the page. This exquisitely composed and remarkably mature volume of poetry marks the arrival of an important new poet. David St. John Drowning is the central metaphor of Robin Behn's fine first collection of poems, and if when reading it our own lives seem to pass before our eyes, it is by virtue of the poet's strong, imaginative gift. The images of this book connect to each other with the logic and authority of dreams, the reader's dreams as well as the writer's. This is a beautifully crafted, deeply felt book' - Linda Pastan.