The 100 poems making up The Milk of Birds (the title comes from a chocolate candy the author's partner loved when she was a girl in Poland) began as a deliberate homage to Kenneth Rexroth's 100 Poems from the Chinese (1971). Soon into his progress, however, the author felt the writing beginning to pull away from the Rexroth model, becoming, instead, a series of short, sometimes plangent, sometimes meditative, sometimes exuberant takes on the beauty and travail of domestic life, on the separateness that is the enemy to love, on the witnessing of the night and the cold that lies at the heart of age and one's overview of all that life has meant.

Gary Michael Dault is a Toronto writer, artist and art critic. He has taught at a number of Canadian universities and written for many newspapers and magazines including the Toronto Star and Canadian Art magazine. He currently writes the ÒGallery Going' column for the Globe and Mail. He is also a regular contributor to a number of TV networks including CBC, CTV, Bravo!, Vision TV, and, most frequently, to TVO's Studio 2. His many books include collaborations with artists Tony Urquhart and Edward Burtynsky, and his poetry has previously been gathered in the books Flying Fish and other poems, and In Smoke.

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