Table of Contents for
Ornithologies of Desire: Ecocritical Essays, Avian Poetics, and Don McKay by Travis V. Mason

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Note on the Cover

Beginnings: An Introduction

PART ONE

Chapter One: Nesting

Chapter Two: Naming

Ecotone One: Field Marks

PART TWO

Chapter Three: Homologies

Chapter Four: Flight

Chapter Five: Gravity

Ecotone Two: Field Guides

PART THREE

Chapter Six: Notes

Chapter Seven: Birdsong

Chapter Eight: Listening

Ecotone Three: Field Notes

PART FOUR

Chapter Nine: Birder-Poet

Chapter Ten: Science

Ecotone Four: Field Trips

Ending: Ravens

Appendix: Bird Concordance

Notes

Works Cited

Index

ENDINGS

'ode of the earth': Nests and Geopoetry

Travis V. Malone

Offers three ways of moving forward by extending the book's main arguments: an examination of nests and nesting, in which McKay is considered a modern-day John Clare; an overview of McKay's "geopoetics," which have occupied his work since 2000; and analyses of McKay's raven poems, which bring together avian and geopoetics to put humans in our place among the most recent of natural phenomena.

Travis V. Mason teaches English and Canadian studies at Dalhousie and Mount St. Vincent Universities. After completing his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia, he studied ecopoetry in South Africa as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow before moving to Halifax to study Canadian literary responses to science with a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship. His articles have appeared in books and journals, including Canadian Literature, Studies in Canadian Literature, The Dalhousie Review, Kunapipi, and Mosaic.