The poems in Some Birds for Robert Rauschenberg can be thought of as boxes into which has been placed individual words and small phrases from various sources – the author’s notebooks, contemporary birding websites, research and news articles, as well 19th and early 20th century bird-related texts. Neither found poetry nor wholly original (except in its syntax), each box is a gathering of materials, “their history exposed by their new shapes” and “labored commonly with happiness.”
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Robert Farrell lives in the Bronx, NY, where he works as a college librarian and writing instructor. A finalist in Narrative Magazine’s annual poetry contest, his work has appeared in Magma, Posit, The Brooklyn Review, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies and elsewhere. His chapbook Meditations on the Body was also published by Ghostbird Press.
