The Comfort of Crows
 The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Yearby Margaret Renkl, illustrated by Billy RenklIn The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring—what develops is a portrait of joy and grief: joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer. Along the way, we also glimpse the changing rhythms of a human life. Grown children, unexpectedly home during the pandemic, prepare to depart once more. Birdsong and night-blooming flowers evoke generations past. The city and the country where Renkl raised her family transform a little more with each passing day. And the natural world, now in visible flux, requires every ounce of hope and commitment from the author—and from us. For, as Renkl writes, “radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world.”  With fifty-two original color artworks by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, The Comfort of Crows is a lovely and deeply moving book from a cherished observer of the natural world. Billy writes: “These collages offer a parallel depiction of the seasons, running alongside Margaret’s essays. In her manuscript Margaret’s yard and neighborhood are profoundly meaningful; in my analogous path through the year, the meaning she finds in the world is underwritten by its physical beauty. “The artwork for Crow doesn’t function as conventional illustration, aiming to represent thin narrative moments from each essay. The series is more like a traditional photo essay, in which details accrue through sustained observation, incrementally building a coherent understanding of the subject. As in Margaret’s yard, bluebirds come and go, native plants bud, flower, and go to seed, and the seasons cycle through. “The collages braid together three threads that also run through the manuscript: the natural world as a source of curiosity when carefully examined with clear eyes, as a source of astonishment and devotion, and as a model for understanding ourselves in relation to each other and the world. “The collages are built on top of toned cyanotypes mounted on handmade paper that has been stained one of four colors to correspond with the seasons. The imagery comes from a wide variety of sources, including antique field guides, notebooks, science books, technical encyclopedias, my own photographs and drawings, photograms of botanical specimens, and other printed ephemera. The found elements are augmented with watercolor, a variety of inks, mineral pigment, gouache, colored pencil, and acrylic.” ABOUT THE BOOK Purchase the book from the publisher HERE. |