Birds and Other Beast

There is tremendous variety in form, theme, and tone in the

poems in this volume. Many of the poems may strike the

reader as corroboration of Thoreau's view of wildness and

wilderness because Peake's love of wild things forms his

poetic center, but this book also includes intense love poems

as well as celebrations of birds and trees and lightning bugs.

Though Peake celebrates nature, he does not view it with

sentimentality. He faces without tears a world in which one

creature preys upon another for...