Dark Wild Realm [Paperback]

Michael Collier (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2007

The award-winning poet Michael Collier’s elegiac fifth collection is haunted by spectral figures and a strange, vivid chorus of birds: From a cardinal that crashes into a window to a gathering of turkey vultures, Collier engages birds as myth-makers and lively messengers, carrying memories from lost friends. The mystery of death and the vital absence it creates are the real subjects of the book. Collier juxtaposes moments of quotidian revelation, like waking to the laughing sounds of bird song, with the drama of Greek tragedy, taking on voices from Medea. As Vanity Fair praised, his poems “tread nimbly between moments of everyday transcendence and spiritual pining.”

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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." (Apr. 2)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

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. Janet St. John
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (November 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618919910
• ISBN-13: 978-0618919918
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,357,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The bright feathers of birds...", December 6, 2007

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dark Wild Realm (Paperback)

The bright feathers of birds, their piercing eyes, the beauty of flight: Collier's collection is defined by such elegant elements, a chorus of birds that haunts the pages, the joy of song and the ultimate mystery of death.

Sometimes it simply is the stark images of nature's largess that captivate the imagination, drawing the mind toward a reflective place where words become bridges:

"One had feathers like a brood-streaked koi,
another a tail of color-coded wires.
One was a blackbird stretching orchid wings.
Another a flicker with a wounded head."
(Birds Appearing in a Dream)

In other poems, birds set the tone of the moment, a joyful awakening at sunrise:

"And you waking next but not laughing,
not at all, not even aware yet
of how loud the morning was becoming."
(Singing, 5 A.M.)

Humanity reaches into the past for instruction, civilization's lessons hard won:

"Time's portion was so small to me,
like the riffle of a current.
Water led me to her:
The way it moved with her anger,
Also her love.


One knows anything until he dies."
(Medea's Oldest Son)

The incandescent present and the haunting past are a fascinating mix, the visually stunning and provocative language of Dark Wild Realm remaining to haunt the imagination. Luan Gaines/2007.