cover image Where Yet the Sweet Birds Sing

Where Yet the Sweet Birds Sing

Richard Quinney, . . Borderland, $24 (170pp) ISBN 978-0-9768781-0-0

Quinney continues his search for meaning in an ordinary life, which he chronicled in Once Again the Wonder (reviewed above), but here his meditations are given urgency by the serious progression of his chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Realizing that "life is more precious than we can ever imagine," he writes a moving journal of his odyssey through an uncertain year (2001), chronicling month by month the simple things he experiences as he waits for results of lab tests and CT scans—getting up at 4 a.m. to observe a meteor shower, strolling through a mall, planting oak seedlings and elderberry bushes—and keeping up an interior monologue about the books he reads and the music he hears. He spends much time at the old family homestead in Wisconsin contemplating relics of the past; observing weasels, foxes and thrushes; and seeking to record the "essence of the place" in his photographs, looking at the farm with new eyes. In December, he notes that at the end of this voyage of discovery he has found what has been there all along: the realization that the farm continues to be the center of his life. As for his illness, he says only that his journey will continue into another year. (Apr.)