A Poetry Book Society Winter 2020 Recommendation. Bill Manhire's Wow opens with the voice of an extinct bird, a song from anciency, and takes us forward into the present and the darkening future of other extinctions. For Manhire, the reach of the lyric is long: it has the penetration of comedy, satire, the Jeremiad, but also the delicacy of minute detail and the rhythms of nature's comfort and hope, the promise of renewal. In the title poem the baby says 'Wow,' and the wonder is real at the world and at language. But the world will have the last word.