Bird Skin Coat (Brittingham Prize in Poetry)

Bird Skin Coat is brimming with startling moments of beauty found within a rusty and decayed landscape. With wild lyrical images of ascent and descent—doves and dives, sparrows and slugs, attics and cellars—this collection reflects Sorby’s keen eye for blending images. As they shuttle between the Upper Midwest and the Pacific Northwest, these poems explore how the radical instability of the world is also the source of its energy.

Bird Skin Coat is brimming with startling moments of beauty found within a rusty and decayed landscape. With wild lyrical images of ascent and descent—doves and dives, sparrows and slugs, attics and cellars—this collection reflects Sorby’s keen eye for blending images.

Part One

Bird Skin Coat   

Breathing Out Smoke   

Nostalgia for the Present   

Rose   

Whose Woods These Are   

Neighborhood Watch

Small Talk   

Middle Distance   

Erin's Leather Jacket   

Dragons of the Bible   

Walking Directions   

What Helen Caught   

Catch and Release   

Conversion Narrative   

Mountain of Names   

The Snow-Woman   

The Diagnosis

Insomnia   

Part Two

Kickflip   

The Attic of the Attic   

Prosperity   

Flyover State   

Taj Mahal   

American Camel   

Sky Falling on Cedars   

Sleeping with Stars   

Forest Floor   

Sleeping in the Pioneer Rooms   

Objects Made Real by Observation   

Night Train to Whitefish   

In the Good Pain Wing       

Six Degrees of Separation   

Transport to Sumer   

Museum Study   

First Lady of the War   

Dove and Dove   

The Urn