Kirjahaku

Bird Notes is a collection of 24 poems blending the traditional sonnet form with a clear modern voice. Some subjects are drawn from nature ("Audubon in verse," according to another poet), while other birds are mythical and metaphorical. Readers will observe an amazing variety: Northern gannets diving for fish in Scotland; a snowy owl in an Ohio field; ring-billed gulls on the Outer Banks of Kitty Hawk, N.C.; a finch in a nursing home aviary; an indigo macaw in an ecological art exhibit. Readers will explore superstition in "A Murder of Crows," theology in the sparrows of "A Question of Disparity," and psychology in the albatross of "Guilt." A few of these poems appeared in Hughes's national award-winning sonnet collection Breaking Weather ((2014); "Phoenix" won a first place award in the 2016 Ohio Poetry Day competition. Betsy Hughes taught English for 30 years at The Miami Valley School in Dayton, Ohio, where she lives with her husband Jim Hughes, Wright State University emeritus professor of English. Together they enjoy discussion and critique with the Wright Library Poets and the Dayton Poetry Circle.

The sonnets of Betsy Hughes take us all over the world, from antiquity to now, from the horrors of mass shootings to the serenity of a forest. These journeys offer, in the elegant sweep of her verses, a captivating new vision of our environment and ourselves. You will never look at things in the same way or feel the same way about your life once you read this book, for you will have traveled to the depths and the heights of the human heart.

The Sixth Sense of Loss has as its subtitle Poems of Restoration, since it depicts not only terrible grief at the death of the author's husband of many years along with dire events in the world at large, but also the restorative powers of the heart and the world of nature. In the end, this is a book in which Hope and Love prevail.