A Bird Watching

"What a beautiful, tender collection of poems Victoria Wyttenberg has written. Commingling longing, desire, and wonder, she creates an aura of comfort in the face of existence's beauties and miseries. With an eye for the upsurges of emotion that come from looking closely at daily life, and with an ear for poetry's affirmation of the music of experience, she affirms in her poems something profound about humanity: we endure because we love. Throughout A Bird Watching, I find a fresh joy in what poetry can accomplish-from a poet who has devoted her lifetime to the hooks that enter the heart."

-David Biespiel, author of Republic Caf?



"What happens to the life of the boy hunting frogs, the father off at war, the mother alone in her kitchen cooking a French dish for the first or hundredth time? And what happens when one's own mother, father, sister, brother, husband, daughter and son are all, as the poet writes, lying tucked in the dark, alone in their graves? Victoria Wyttenberg gives us a Master Class on how to live and how to grieve in these beautiful narrative poems. Nature is present, family and the death of family, trauma and love, all! Life is hard. What a privilege to be guided through it, at least within these pages, by such a thoughtful, talented, and dynamic poet."

-Matthew Dickman, author of Husbandry