The Secret Birds
An Exhibit by Tony Fitzpatrick
Currently on display at the Poetry Foundation, The Secret Birds is Tony Fitzpatrick’s final show of drawings before leaving Chicago for New Orleans, where he will study ornithology and natural history at the University of New Orleans. The work interlaces poetry, ephemera, and his institutional memory of the city itself: “a bird made from bright planets.”
A play of The Secret Birds will be held at the Poetry Foundation on Thursday, July 31.
Here Tony Fitzpatrick shares his stories of the birds that inspired these drawings.
Tony Fitzpatrick grew up in Lombard, IL, the son of a burial vault salesman. Fitzpatrick was routinely suspended from Catholic School on bad behavior. On those days he would ride along with his father to sales appointments and listen to stories of life and of Chicago. Birds were especially important to Fitzpatrick because, as his grandmother used to say, “For the price of a piece of bread you can …