A Pentecost of Finches: New and Selected Poems

Moving up the chain of being from inchworm to angel, Siegel's poems celebrate life in all its aspects, from unsettling glimpses of the abyss to union with nature and that which transcends it—from oracular beasts to ordinary people, from the seismic love of boar and sow to a surgeon's reflections on a neardeath experience and "the last tantrum of a dying star." On the way they explore the mystery of evil, the meaning of history, our own mysterious quests, and the human search for transformative joy. Siegel's poems rejoice in the being of each particular thing, finding epiphanies in the ordinary, inviting us to step outside ourselves into an "ecstasy of particulars."