Some books are not books—
I am intimidated to begin this review. I am scared to approach something so gimlet-eyed, something with a vision so different—richer, wilder, more precise—than my own. I’m supposed to recognize it, but I don’t, quite; it could mean any number of things, and—as in the best poetry—those things are somehow inseparable from the expression the writer has already given them.
The hawk-book’s form is perfect. It prickles your skin the way nature can when you are surprised by an animal in your path. Some books are not books but visitations, and this one has crossed its share of thresholds before arriving here, to an impossible middle perch between wilderness and culture, past and present, life and death.
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