Dark Wild Realm

March 13, 2006
In the 38 intense but prosaic lyrics, Collier, a National Book Critic's Circle Award finalist, invokes an ominously mythic vision of reality reminiscent of the work of Ted Hughes. Poems centered on birds ("something bold, big-billed, and broad towered above them") alternate with reflections on the mysterious operations of nature, invocations of the dead ("Dangerously frail is what his hand was like/ when he showed up at our house,/ three or four days after his death") and intimate recollections of love: "Look how far into the day we've moved// and yet we're still in bed, awake, silent." Collier (The Ledge,
2002) is at his most arresting when these solemn meditations give way to metaphor, as in "Invocation to the Heart," in which Romeo and Juliet become figures of love's difficult awakenings: "Remember that each of us/ lay dead awhile/ waiting for the other."

March 15, 2006
Collier's fifth collection is a compact delight, filled with brief and poignant insights into the human condition. With birds as both harbingers and witnesses, Collier demonstrates a practiced art of poetic juggling. This is exemplified in a poem about a mortician's son: how ill fit he is for the profession, yet how comforting he is, though irritating to the deceased's wife. Collier fluidly intertwines the tragic, the promising, and the absurd. Several poems are elegiac, while others sing in praise of the strength of the human will. Throughout there is a pensive mood, as though someone is inside, reflecting on the cold beauty outside on a winter night. In the quiet of such solitary reverie, tender recollections, fleeting observations through windows, and spectral visitations are all possible. Readers will find Collier's poems refreshingly accessible, though never simplistic. They employ meditative feats of mind while remaining grounded on Earth.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)