Product Description

For the last 20 years, Alan Powers, who lives near Cape Cod, has experimented with birdcalls—mimicking and answering the calls he hears around his country home, in cities, and abroad in France and Italy. In BirdTalk, he celebrates this connection with entertaining allusions to history, literature, travel, linguistics, and other fields. The result is a charming and erudite stroll through an area of interest sometimes lost in the urban din. Powers reveals “birdtalk” by mapping the history of ornithological studies, quoting such bird fanciers as Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson and discussing specific techniques. In one of the most amusing chapters, he describes his attempts to teach the birds new symphonic riffs on their own calls. This illustrated literary inquiry into birdcalls is a nature book with a gift-book look.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #877266 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-27
• Released on: 2002-12-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

About the Author
Alan Powers graduated from Amherst College in 1966 and earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota in 1974. Since that year he has been on the faculty at Bristol Community College, where he was Chairman of the English Department from 1988-1992. A scholar of Renaissance Italian, English, and American literature, he has published and lectured widely on Shakespeare, Giordano Bruno, Seventeeth Century and Romantic poetry, as well as Emily Dickinson and other American writers. Interested as much in local history as language, his interests include research and publishing on early American New England street games. He has held many fellowships and prizes for research and his own poetry, and in 2001 made a guest appearance in James Wolpaw's documentary film on Emily Dickinson. Powers lives in Westport, Massachusetts, with his wife, the artist Susan Mohl Powers.

Customer Reviews

A strange and wonderful book
It really is about talking to birds--and how! Powers, in perfectly paced prose, writes a series of engaging and delightfully idiosyncratic essays about what it means to 'talk' to birds; ultimately, though, this is a book about listening, watching, appreciating the world around us. Let me sum up the power of my reaction by saying that this is a birder I'd like to bird with.

A musical score of nature
Birdtalk is really an amazing book--literate, amusing, and indispensible to bird lovers. But it is more than a bird book. Alan Powers, along with possessing an affinity for words, is a master whistler, an accomplished pianist, and a patient listener--and, oh yeah, a very early riser. Powers uses his keen ear and musical ability to "translate" the songs of bird into notes on his piano, a musical score of nature, if you will. More than that, he translates these notes into a narrative language that humans can (hope to) understand. This is a nature book and a bird book, but it is also a human book, and a very astute one to boot.