One of America¿s most acclaimed younger poets entwines original and scavenged texts, lyric fragment and lyric song, to make a new form¿this book¿from wild metaphor. A passerine is a bird of the taxonomic order Passeriformes, often called ¿songbirds¿ or ¿perching birds.¿ The passerines are among the most diverse of terrestrial vertebrates, and in his book-length canticle¿both aria and elegy¿the poet sings like a modern-day St. Francis to the wonder of creation in its splendor and peril.