October 1, 2013
Collins, or the speaker in his poems, watches himself with helpless bemusement as he lives a life of continual self-expression, / jotting down little things. Obsessive noticing gets him into all sorts of trouble, as recounted so wryly, so tenderly in Aimless Love, the poem that gives this vital and shrewdly provocative volume its title and in which the speaker records his sequential ardor for a wren, a mouse, and a bar of soap. In selections from his four most recent collections, from Nine Horses (2002) to Horoscopes for the Dead (2011), and 51 glimmering new poems, former poet laureate and reader favorite Collins, the maestro of the running-brook line and the clever pivot, celebrates the resonance and absurdity of what might be called the poet's attention-surfeit disorder. He nimbly mixes the timelessthe sun, lonelinesswith the fidgety, digital now. Some poems are funny from the opening gambit to the closing flourish. But Collins' droll wit is often a diversionary tactic, so that when he strikes you with the hard edge of his darker visions, you reel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)
November 25, 2013
Two-term Poet Laureate Collins offers up this compilation of poems from the chapbooks he published over the last 12 years. Collins has a clear, plainspoken voice that makes for an easy, even relaxing, listening experience. At the same time, the poems he’s collected here are often biting. In “High,” Collins mentions how one October morning he (or his narrator) is “only behind a double espresso /and a single hit of anti-depressant,” yet feels like he’s “walking with Jane Austen /to borrow the jargon of the streets.” Collins narrates this poem—and indeed many others—with a sort of dry amusement. Or take “A Dog on His Master,” which is both poignant and funny (it is, after all, written from a dog’s point of view): “As young as I look, /I am growing older faster than he... I will pass him one day /and take the lead /the way I do on our walks in the woods.” It’s a sparse, beautiful poem, and its power builds gradually through the last stanza, where Collins slows the pace of his reading to allow listeners can ruminate on his final lines. Overall, Collins does a solid and sometimes transcendent job reading his own work. A Random House hardcover.