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Articles

Volume 19, Number 2 (1994)

"that every feather is a pen, but living, / / flying" Desire: The Metapoetics of Don McKay's BIRDING, or desire

  • Alanna F. Bondar
Soumise
mai 22, 2008
Publié-e
1994-06-06

Résumé

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.