Reviews
In the Haida creation myth, the Raven persuaded the first people to emerge from a great clam shell.
In A Bird Black as the Sun—an accessible and riveting collection—crows and ravens coax from the page
the human story and landscape, while still maintaining their own elemental mystery.
Los Angeles Review
A book whose heights, swoops, visions, and versatile multiplicities of flight-path are worthy
of the trickster-bird celebrated in its pages.
Jane Hirshfield
When 80 California poets come together to create an anthology about crows and ravens, you know these corvids
have a strong grip on the human imagination. This wonderful collection, divided into 10 sections beginning with
“Awakener” and ending with “Night-Bringer," inspires you to dig deep for your own crow thoughts.
Golden Gate Audubon Society
A Bird Black as the Sun is a delightful, disturbing, dark, witty, and wild collection of poems that look at crows
and ravens even beyond our beloved 13 ways...Kudos to the poets and the editors for this terrific anthology.
Ellen Bass
With regards to our preeminent ground-foraging corvids, this much is certain: they bring out the best in poets.
For those poets gathered together in A Bird Black as the Sun, the crow, the raven, appear as tricksters, totem
creatures, visitants, mascots, messengers, confessors, omen bearers and adversaries. I mention this lest
anyone suppose two mere birds don't deserve a whole anthology, or cannot inspire a sufficient range and
variety of writings. Two birds can. Two birds do...The crow, the raven, would be mighty pleased with this
anthology, if only they could read. And -- maybe they can.
Suzanne Lummis
Bird of paradox, ring of ancestors, shifter of shapes, derisive rooks, lustrous darkness, tarry selves,
dark reminders--these names and many, many more are bestowed by California poets upon that
Bird Black As the Sun. The names are accurate in every instance and wonderfully telling, even
or maybe particularly when mutually contradictory. Here is an enjoyable and provocative anthology.
Fred Chappell
This collection of poetry offers an updated vision from 85 California poets on how corvids have shapeshifted
alongside our need to dream of them. The range of visions and characters of ravens and crows—as fellow
travelers, as Awakener, Enigma, Omen, Likeness, Messenger, or Muse—is also reflected by a range of poetic
styles and traditions. There are well-known and established poets, as well as accessible meditative and lyric
poetic styles. But there are also outliers: experimentalists with darker, more abstract, subsonic voices,
representing the fecund range of writing to be found in California, and the more unnamable, interstitial spaces
in which these birds are our eyes, our ears, extensions of a vision of the future we can’t yet fully visualize.
Litseen.com
There are 10 sections in this anthology of black birds, ranging between Muse and Joker, and over 80 California
poetic sightings. Each poet relates, connects to these intelligent creatures... We the readers flock to the writings
and are led on a journey of discovery and delight.
Wilderness House Literary Review
In A Bird Black as the Sun—an accessible and riveting collection—crows and ravens coax from the page
the human story and landscape, while still maintaining their own elemental mystery.
Los Angeles Review
A book whose heights, swoops, visions, and versatile multiplicities of flight-path are worthy
of the trickster-bird celebrated in its pages.
Jane Hirshfield
When 80 California poets come together to create an anthology about crows and ravens, you know these corvids
have a strong grip on the human imagination. This wonderful collection, divided into 10 sections beginning with
“Awakener” and ending with “Night-Bringer," inspires you to dig deep for your own crow thoughts.
Golden Gate Audubon Society
A Bird Black as the Sun is a delightful, disturbing, dark, witty, and wild collection of poems that look at crows
and ravens even beyond our beloved 13 ways...Kudos to the poets and the editors for this terrific anthology.
Ellen Bass
With regards to our preeminent ground-foraging corvids, this much is certain: they bring out the best in poets.
For those poets gathered together in A Bird Black as the Sun, the crow, the raven, appear as tricksters, totem
creatures, visitants, mascots, messengers, confessors, omen bearers and adversaries. I mention this lest
anyone suppose two mere birds don't deserve a whole anthology, or cannot inspire a sufficient range and
variety of writings. Two birds can. Two birds do...The crow, the raven, would be mighty pleased with this
anthology, if only they could read. And -- maybe they can.
Suzanne Lummis
Bird of paradox, ring of ancestors, shifter of shapes, derisive rooks, lustrous darkness, tarry selves,
dark reminders--these names and many, many more are bestowed by California poets upon that
Bird Black As the Sun. The names are accurate in every instance and wonderfully telling, even
or maybe particularly when mutually contradictory. Here is an enjoyable and provocative anthology.
Fred Chappell
This collection of poetry offers an updated vision from 85 California poets on how corvids have shapeshifted
alongside our need to dream of them. The range of visions and characters of ravens and crows—as fellow
travelers, as Awakener, Enigma, Omen, Likeness, Messenger, or Muse—is also reflected by a range of poetic
styles and traditions. There are well-known and established poets, as well as accessible meditative and lyric
poetic styles. But there are also outliers: experimentalists with darker, more abstract, subsonic voices,
representing the fecund range of writing to be found in California, and the more unnamable, interstitial spaces
in which these birds are our eyes, our ears, extensions of a vision of the future we can’t yet fully visualize.
Litseen.com
There are 10 sections in this anthology of black birds, ranging between Muse and Joker, and over 80 California
poetic sightings. Each poet relates, connects to these intelligent creatures... We the readers flock to the writings
and are led on a journey of discovery and delight.
Wilderness House Literary Review
