These are wonderful poems, full of memory and keen observation, alive to their fingertips. I don't think I'll ever forget "The Blue Hour," for instance, with its image of the dead 'swirling / from chimneys like hundreds of souls / lured by stars, ' and then that final image of 'Katie Estan's older sister, ' dead from meningitis, who returns to drift past the speaker's 'snow-shackled rooftop.' Poem after poem in House Bird is beyond beautiful. This is a book to savor, to reread. A splendid poetic achievement.

-Jay Parini

Fillman excavates what might seem ordinary to find radiance. In striking, fully articulated poems, he explores generational ties and the painstaking wages of parenthood. These poems are clear-eyed, generous, and compassionate. As when Fillman writes movingly about blessing a house for its future inhabitants, in similar fashion, these poems offer their blessings to readers.

-Lee Upton