In Don McKay's BIRDING, or desire, the motif of flight and migration serves as an elaborate metaphor for the poetic process. The text discusses its own making: through the metaphor of birding, McKay addresses the nature of poets, the poetic process, and the poet-reader dynamic. Although McKay's poetics critique his own ability to transcribe life's realities into language, the poet must use words (translations of things) to reconstruct a way of responding to the natural world; the artist perpetually (re)creates the world for the reader.
