Nightingale

"With grace and vision, Roberts lets us hear the music and mystery of nightingales sounding across centuries and cultures. This powerfully attentive study of an astonishing bird is also a miniature history of literature and of human efforts to find words for nature. Deeply researched, lyrical, elegiac, rich with hope and vitality, this is a book for our times." -- Alexandra Harris, Professorial Fellow in English at the University of Birmingham, author of "Romantic Moderns" "Roberts's book is lucid, exhaustive, generous, and intelligent. . . . All poets should read it. All birdwatchers should too. It reads true to the bird as well as to the long history of its human-imagined existence. To have seen what we have made of nightingales and to be able to leave us with the bird restored to itself is a great achievement." -- Tim Dee, author of "Greenery" and "The Running Sky"