Life List: Poems

"Exquisite and full of life like the birds themselves. In each poem we find clarity and compassion as we stand on the razor-edge of uncertainty." Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

2021 Spur Award Finalist

2020 Montana Book Award Honor Book

A kind of field guide in poetry, Life List pays tribute to the birds that have flown through Beaudin's years of watching and listening, through his attempts to render in language the precarious circumstances of being alive. With a sharp critique of environmental, social and political issues, along with haunting ruminations on loss, love and the passing of time, these poems fill the skies with a feathered grace.

Includes an introduction by J Drew Lanham, author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature, plus more than 20 original bird monotypes by artist Storrs Bishop. This is truly a unique book that any fan of poetry or birding will enjoy.

Learn more about this book, the author, plus find original prints direct from the publisher at: www.riverfeetpress.com

Editorial Reviews

"Passionate yet mature, this is Beaudin's most inspired and finest work. Every Montanan should own it, and ever birder. Every reader." Rick Bass, author of Why I Came West, and The Traveling Feast: On the Road and at the Table with My Heroes

"Exquisite in its celebration of flight and how wilderness works its way into our blood and bones and calls us to something transcendent." Shann Ray, author of American Masculine, and Atomic Theory 7

"A deftly woven catalogue of human experience through the keen observations of birds and landscapes. Beaudin masterfully translates the mysterious language between magpies and mountains and weaves it into a beautifully poetic tapestry."

Michael Garrigan, author of Robbing the Pillars

"Beaudin's poems ask us to pay attention not only to birds, but to our dreams, to the music that circles around us all." Taylor Brorby, author of Crude: Poems