Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) is better known as a naturalist or an academic essayist than as a poet, yet he shows equal skill throughout. All the Night Wings is the most recently published of his four books of poetry, which became available between 1972 and 1979. Its 98 pages present poems selected from across his entire career, many previously unpublished. All are characterized by his intense awareness of a close kinship with all living things, from other humans to animals and insects. His first fourteen years, with a deaf mother, taught him so to mine meaning from minimal communication that his vision of the world is different, challenging. His sense of geologic time is arresting, sobering. His literary gift is certain. One of his earlier collections of poetry is entitled "Notes of an Alchemist.
