The poems in Some Birds for Robert Rauschenberg can be thought of as boxes into which has been placed individual words and small phrases from various sources – the author’s notebooks, contemporary birding websites, research and news articles, as well 19th and early 20th century bird-related texts. Neither found poetry nor wholly original (except in its syntax), each box is a gathering of materials, “their history exposed by their new shapes” and “labored commonly with happiness.”