A History of Half-Birds

“A History of Half-Birds, an inventive and impressively wide-ranging collection, has me considering and reconsidering the connections between seemingly disparate things: between poetry and science, both fueled by curiosity, imagination, and possibility; between history and myth, precision and ambiguity, the known and the unknown. In the Anthropocene, we may be tempted to ask what poetry can do for us when what we need are tools for survival. I’d argue that these poems are just that—expertly crafted, satisfying to hold and behold, and sharp enough to dissect what needs dissecting. We‘re so lucky to have this book here and now.”

“Steeped in Gulf Coast flora and fauna, Caroline Harper New’s A History of Half-Birds is a gorgeous collection of poems that spins widdershins like a hurricane. This book embraces life’s complicated dualities—the precarious gravity of Saturn’s rings, nightmares that visit with every new love, the way an anglerfish attracts both its mate and prey with the same lure. Equally embracing facts and lyricism, New weaves stray opossums and beached whales into love poems, jellyfish and memory into a chandelier. Each poem is full of the world’s intimate facts that suddenly become mirrors. They are tender and wise and illuminate their mysteries. It’s a truly beautiful debut.”

“Like a ‘flashlight / prying through the night swamps,’ Caroline Harper New’s poems delve into the dark and treacherous corners of ourselves to ask, ‘What would any of us do / if freed?’ Through conversations with doctors and paleontologists, she traces ‘what’s left of a body,’ eroding the borders between human and non-human: inside a humpback whale she finds a sitting room, and it is unclear whether the floating lights of a Florida street are jellyfish or chandeliers. When ‘the future prickles dark at your spine,’ Caroline Harper New’s A History of Half-Birds teaches us that our only hope is to return to the body, to open our ‘shoulder / blades and dig.’”

“There’s an untamed luminescence to Caroline Harper New’s debut, A History of Half Birds, a collection steeped in science and mythology.”

“I will be forever grateful to Caroline Harper New for teaching me about widdershins, the colliding moons of Saturn, and the anatomy of sirens. Gorgeous!”

“Caroline Harper New’s poetry in A History of Half-Birds is a robust and enterprising collection of real and imagined dreamscapes designed to provoke the subliminal and visceral to beautiful effect, or maybe to butterfly effect, as the poems all support the notion that our world is deeply interconnected.”