In a chronicle of mourning and survival, Ali Liebegott wallows in loneliness and over-assigns meaning to everyday circumstance, clinging to an aging dog and obsessing over dead birds. But these unpretentious vignettes are laced with compassion, as she learns to balance the sting of death with the tender strangeness of life.
"Everything Ali Liebegott writes no matter how soaked with sorrow glimmers with the faint light of joy, so great is her loving attention to the particulars of this world. The Summer of Dead Birds is a near mythic journey into life-stopping loss: a howl, and a hymn to what's mortal. But in Liebegott's spare rich language and lines (and in the silences between the lines), what is gone might blink br
Marie Howe, author of Magdalene
"The Summer of Dead Birds is sweet and so sad and the writing's perfect."
Eileen Myles, author of Afterglow
"When I read The Summer of Dead Birds the first time, the tender, fragile body of the work kept me breathless from page to page. The second time I read it, the space the poet leaves for the reader was clear and I felt my own fragile tenderness. We are fortunate to have the stark genius of Ali Liebegott on earth to push our lives forward, like all the best poets do."
CA Conrad, author of While Standing in Line for Death
