Life List

“Exquisite and full of life like the birds themselves. In each poem we find clarity and compassion as we stand on the razor-edge of uncertainty.” - Terry Tempest Williams

“Passionate yet mature, this is Beaudin’s most inspired and finest work. Every Montanan should own it, and every birder. Every reader.” - Rick Bass

“Beaudin moves through the bird world in a state of meditative wonder.  Like a rapt man with one eye pressed to a microscope, it is Beaudin’s job to look—to look carefully.  He reports back with equal care, and the paths he takes us down are delightful.” -Michael Earl Craig (former Montana Poet Laureate)

“This is a powerful, creative, and environmentally grounded work. Beautiful and exquisite in its celebration of flight and how wilderness works its way into our blood and bones and calls us to something transcendent.”   –Shann Ray, author of American Copper 

“Beaudin’s Life List is a deftly woven catalogue of human experience through the keen observations of birds and landscapes. These poems find “the magic in the mundane” and exemplify and glorify all the intricate ways we are tied to this world. Beaudin masterfully translates the mysterious language between magpies and mountains and weaves it into a beautifully poetic tapestry.” 

- Michael Garrigan, author of Robbing the Pillars

"Life List, poem after impressive poem, is a strenuous & crucial effort to lift us all into loving consciousness by way of beauty, the sheer beauty of the natural world.”   –William Heyen, author of Shoah Train and Crazy Horse in Stillness

“Beaudin’s poems are truly poems for this moment. To inhabit birds and other vulnerable creatures, along with the beauty and wildness that bequeath us our souls, is to name what’s at stake in this moment. It has always been the poet’s job, but now, it is their sacred calling. Beaudin delivers beautifully.”  - Winona Bateman, Climate Organizer with Families for a Livable Climate

“Beaudin’s poems dip and swerve and caw; if you listen closely enough, you might just begin to understand that the ache of the human heart can only be translated through the language of crows.”   –Meg Kearney, author of An Unkindness of Ravens

"These poems beat with ancient songs from dinosaurs to the overlooked metal bucket. Marc Beaudin’s poems ask us to pay attention not only to birds, but to our dreams, to the music that circles arounds us all."  - Taylor Brorby, author Crude: Poems and Boys and Oil

“Life List at first glance might appear to be a collection “for the birds” given the Latin name assigned to each poems' feathered subject and accompanied by Storrs Bishop’s monotype images, but you’ll recognize these birds, his words, marking each poem and grounding us long enough to take flight in this outdoor field guide of an interior life. These poems find what every bird watcher and bird-brained poet is looking for: the magic in the mundane.”  - Mark Gibbons, Montana Poet Laureate (2021) author of The Imitation Blues and Mostly Cloudy

“A beautiful collection of poetry crafted for the eco-nature lover.” -Montana Book Award Committee