Sunday, July 12, 2009

BULLETIN / Exclusive: Birds, Various Wildlife, Engulf Poetry Refuge ... Is It Safe? Can Marilyn Nelson Handle The Pressure?



Find Out,
Wed., July 22, 2009

  • Sunken Garden 09 Schedule


  • Cave Canem


  • MILLRACE BOOK SHOP, Vendor For Sunken Garden




  • IS MARILYN NELSON READY?
    [answer below]


    DATELINE BIRDLAND, aka SUNKEN GARDEN -- Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist for the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, CT, reports an onslaught of birds and various wildlife this season at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival.

    Was it all the rain, the visit by the dynamic left coasters Robert Hass and Brenda Hillman or some other inexplicable confluence of events?

    In any case, here is Tucker's list of bird and wildlife sightings during the current poetry season:

    American Robin

    Eastern Pheobe

    Chimney Swift (can they be nesting in the Congregational, Episcopal, Catholic churches?)

    Chipping Sparrow

    Northern Flicker


    Scarlet Tanager

    Chickadee

    House Sparrow


    Red-Bellied Woodpecker

    Downy Woodpecker

    Barn Swallow

    Cedar Waxwing

    Red-Tailed Hawk

    Tree Swallow

    Goldfinch

    Catbird

    Song Sparrow

    Cardinal

    Blue Jay

    European Starling

    Eastern Bluebird

    Great-Crested Flycatcher

    Grackle

    Brown-Headed Cowbird

    Wood Thrush

    Baltimore Oriole


    Mourning Dove

    Red-Eyed Vireo

    Warbling Vireo

    House Finch


    OTHER WILDLIFE:


    Grey Tree Frog

  • TANGENT -- Frog Mating Season: An Under-Reported Phenomenon


  • OTHER WILDLIFE, continued :

    Snowy Tree-Cricket

    Bats (unlikely to be northern bats)

    Fireflies (on my pants)

    Sugar Ants

    American Toad

    Crane Fly

    Mosquito (need I point this out?)

    Domestic Species:
    Shetland Sheep

    BOX SCORE:
    30 birds, 8 Other Species, 1 Charmingly Domestic Species


    Cheers, Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist, Hill-Stead Museum
  • Hill-Stead's Nature Blog



  • YES, NELSON IS READY


    ABOUT MARILYN NELSON

    Poet Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of twelve books and three chapbooks.

    Her book The Homeplace won the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award. The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems won the 1998 Poets' Prize and was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award, the PEN Winship Award, and the Lenore Marshall Prize. Carver: A Life In Poems won the 2001 Boston Globe/Hornbook Award and the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, a Newbery Honor Book, and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book.

    Fortune's Bones was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and won the Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. A Wreath For Emmett Till won the 2005 Boston Globe—Horn Book Award and was a 2006 Coretta Scott King Honor Book, a 2006 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and a 2006 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Book. The Cachoeira Tales And Other Poems won the L.E. Phillabaum Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, an A.C.L.S. Contemplative Practices Fellowship, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, three honorary doctorates, and a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Nelson is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut; founder and director of Soul Mountain Retreat, a small writers' colony; and the former (2001—2006) Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut.

  • Soul Mountain Retreat


  • MILLRACE BOOK SHOP, Vendor For Sunken Garden


  • FROM LAST YEAR: Bird Friends Of Poet Billy Collins Noted By Naturalist Diane Tucker


  • MORE BACKGROUND: Melanie Lieberman, Young Writers 09 Keynote Speaker & 07 State Prose Champion, Among Performers At Sunken Garden Wednesday [July 8]
  • 1 comment:

    Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist, Hill-Stead Museum said...

    Compelling, interesting and entertaining blog! I'll look for you at the next poetry night at Hill-Stead! Hope for good weather so I can see and hear the natural compliments to our poet. Cheers, Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist, Hill-Stead Museum