A Convergence of Birds

When he was still a college student, Jonathan Safran Foer began writing to famous poets and writers, asking them to create original poetry and fiction based on the diorama-like Bird Boxes of collage artist Joseph Cornell. Twenty writers and poets responded among them former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, Joyce Carol Oates, Paul West, Rick Moody, Howard Norman, Robert Coover, Dale Peck, Diane Ackerman and Barry Lopez and A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell is the fantastical result. It includes color reproductions of Cornell's Boxes (28 color illustrations in all), and has already been praised by Susan Sontag, Ann Beattie and Madison Smartt Bell. Cornell fans won't want to miss this odd and beautiful book, and many other readers will be pleased to find an anthology with so much original work by fine writers. ( June)