Hummingbird Sometimes Flies Backwards

The characters and voices of the poems in Hummingbird range across time and distance, from Wisconsin farms to Mexico, from Eve to Ezra Pound, from innocent young lovers to guilty priests and Greek myths to current conflicts. The poems vary in tone from contemplative to comical, and hopeful to heartbreaking. There are poems of intellectual and philosophical questioning, love poems, poems that grieve for the dead, and poems that rage at injustice and the abuse of power. The poems show a variety of poetic influences including Modernism, Organic Form, Imagism, and the idea of the line as a unit of perception, Many poems are written about characters, or in the voices of characters, sometimes multiple characters and dialogue. There is also a great variety of topics and themes: Wonder and appreciation for the beauty of the natural world; the nature of time; the nature of language; political oppression; romantic and sensual love - often as a vehicle for self-discovery. The poems are not arranged chronologically. The sudden shifts of tone, the many different topics and themes, and the seeming contradiction of very different types of poems are all deliberate choices. This book, like life itself, doesn't follow a straight line, but zigzags there and here, with unforeseen twists and turns, abrupt reversals, and inevitable returns. Like a hummingbird.