by Sam Juliano
Jonathan Livingston Seagull was one of the best-selling books of the seventies. This spiritual novella is about self-perfection and soaring in flight. The work spawned a popular movie which in large measure kept the author’s vision intact. Recalling my experience of reading the book in my senior year in high school as I engaged with Helen Frost and Rick Lieder’s breathtaking Sweep Up the Sun I again understood the exhilaration felt by those who explore the natural world. Helen Frost (there is something inherently poetic in that name) and Rick Lieder previously collaborated on Step Gently Out, a lyrical immersion of the insect universe. The new book is just as extraordinarily beautiful as Step, again combining Frost’s evocative word economy with spectacular close-up photography by Lieder that replicates the buoyancy of flight and pictorial splendor of the cinema. Frost’s words are meant to inspire people to strive for excellence, to achieve their goals through individual application, to visit places not yet traversed. Like her famed namesake, she urges young people to walk down that road not taken. You might reach your destination alone or with some others who share your vision. Your determination will allow you to advance way up the ladder, perhaps with little fanfare. Frost’s poetry is a textbook example of making every word count, and her special word pictures are given the invigorating and intoxicating aerial photographs by an artist who knows well the language of movement, space and expression.
An arresting shot of two robin offspring with their mouths wide open preparing to be fed in is showcased on the first end papers, before Frost’s poetry is launched with Rise into the air on the strength of your wings, alongside the full spread of a blue jay, while on the following page sparrows are seen is less austere terms to the command Go out to play in the sky. Then we see a red maned house finch opposite another sparrow as the words define their movement: Trusting it to hold you/as you learned to fly. (more…)