The Unexpected Aviary - Deerbrook Editions

In Praise of The Unexpected Aviary

The quality of persistent attention in Berger's work constitutes, I think, the heart of the poetic act. It is hard enough to find the inner space and self-command for that attention in our time; it is a matter of verbal gift and discipline to be able to make such attention audible to others. It matters that her attention is paid to such endangered objects as human love and the extra-human natural world; to the intricate connection between our conduct of love and that imperiled world.

-Mary Baine Campbell Author of The World, The Flesh, and The Angels

In language that is hauntingly singular in its music and its psychological tenor, Berger has wrested from a difficult, and tenuous, even precarious life, a stubborn, intelligent, and affirming poetry. Her lines, like the birds she writes about, dart out of the shadows with such swiftness and grace we feel startled into perception. The reader feels catapulted into a world where truth is apprehended through the complex intelligence and receptivity of the non-linear mind; in fact, the poems persuade us into abandoning our preconceptions and habits of mind.

-Teresa Cader Author of The Paper Wasp