The Hummingbird Sometimes Flies Backwards

The Hummingbird Sometimes Flies Backwards is a wide-ranging collection of poems on varied subjects and in different voices by the American poet, D. J. Hamilton. The poems are drawn primarily from his years spent in Mexico and Central America, as well as the country of his birth.

The characters and voices of the poems in Hummingbird range across time and distance, from Wisconsin farms to Mexico, from Eve to Ezra Pound, from innocent young lovers to guilty priests, and Greek myths to current conflicts. The poems vary in tone from contemplative to comical, and hopeful to heartbreaking. There are poems of intellectual and philosophical questioning, love poems, poems that grieve for the dead, and poems that rage at injustice and the abuse of power. This book, like life itself, doesn’t follow a straight line, but zigzags there and here, with unforeseen twists and turns, abrupt reversals, and inevitable returns. Like a hummingbird.