Bird Boy: Evolution at Lightspeed

Abstract

What is the difference between human and animal? How might we define the murky place between us? How might we explore it, identify it, and make peace with the spaces where we brush up against one another? Is there some of the animal inside all of us? How do we connect with it? Should we? And if we do, what will we find? Using extended metaphor, personification, and transformational images of the body, Bird Boy adds to this collective questioning. The speaker of these essays and poems pushes against the animal inside of himself, aligning human emotion, introspection, and morality with the physicality, rituals, and behaviors of birds.