Mockingbird Song

The American South is generally warmer wetter weedier snakier and more insect infested and disease prone than other regions of the country. It is alluring to the scientifically and poetically minded alike. With <i>Mockingbird Song</i> Jack Temple Kirby offers a personal and passionate recounting of the centuries-old human-nature relationship in the South. Exhibiting violent cycles of growth abandonment dereliction resettlement and reconfiguration this relationship Kirby suggests has the sometimes melodious sometimes cacophonous vocalizations of the region’s emblematic avian the mockingbird.<br/><br/>In a narrative voice marked by the intimacy and enthusiasm of a storyteller Kirby explores all of the South’s peoples and their landscapes — how humans have used yielded or manipulated varying environments and how they have treated forests water and animals. Citing history literature and cinematic portrayals along the way Kirby also relates how southerners have thought about their part of Earth — as a source of both sustenance and delight.