Like the burgeoning sounds of morning from which Dawn Chorus takes its name, these poems emerge from the darkness of urban isolation into brilliant wilderness. More than half of the world’s humans now live in cities, waking to the rhythm of artificial light, lulled by the hum of machines. We sense that some important part of us has atrophied but cannot name it.

 

Dawn Chorus is a warning and a celebration. Pettway’s lines remind us how deeply we harm ourselves when we turn away from nature and invite us to revel in the rediscovery of our wildest selves.

 

"The Alice Pettway of Dawn Chorus is an urban fabulist and pastoral realist—a modern-day Arcimboldo who rebuilds herself repeatedly in these poems, at the fulcrum between outworn civilization and fragile wilderness. Dawn Chorus is an escape from denial: it refuses to be cut off any longer. Even as the city shapes these poems, nature sings its way back to the foreground. Without merganser and yarrow, without a rebalancing, we’re undone." —William Pierce, Coeditor, AGNI