Friday, April 12, 2024

Review of "Fill Me With Birds" by Scott Ferry and Daniel McGinn


Scott Ferry and Daniel McGinn, Fill Me With Birds (Meat for Tea Press, 2024) 104 pages, poetry, $16.95. Order here.

 

Those nights when you stay up past midnight and the conversations go silly and then profoundly deep, that's what this is.

 

Two mature men muse on everything from aging parents to children, to marriage, to health issues, to overcoming addiction, to God, to the changing of seasons, to resentment and forgiveness. The poems are written as if letters or emails going back and forth. But in my head cannon, they are sitting in a late-night living room in front of a fire passing a (legal) smoke between them.

 

At times, it can feel almost too intimate and honest for the reader to eavesdrop on politely. This is good stuff. 

 

Most of the lines I made note of were Scott Ferry's, I think, though I didn't track who wrote which line. If you want to know that, you can read it. But here are some of the lines that stood out to me:

 

"I know now it is too late for/ bargaining// the best I can manage/ is obsolescence"

 

"the face of god: is the inside of longing when there is no waiting left"

 

"Nerves are like brains,/ remember how we used to be? The body knows/ what is and isn't there."

 

"I lost the easy talk/ I did not want to impress anyone anymore"

 

"solve/ hate like a controlled burn/ near a freeway"

 

"I still have a fire a fire a fire"

 

On meditation, some of these poems are darker and heavier than they appear. The request to "fill me with birds" seems to be a wish for a lightening of the soul from the burdens voiced through these conversations. 


 

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