Dark Wild Realm

by Collier, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780618582228
• ISBN10: 0618582223
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-02
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

A haunting orchestra of birds sing through this elegiac newcollection by a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Author Biography

Michael Collier has been the director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference for five years and has taught English at the University of Maryland, College Park, for fifteen years. His previous volumes of poetry are THE CLASP AND OTHER POEMS, THE FOLDED HEART, THE NEIGHBOR, and most recently THE LEDGE, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Collier is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, NEA fellowships, and the Discovery/The Nation Award, among other honors. He resides in Maryland.

Table of Contents

A Prologue	ix
Birds Appearing in a Dream	3	(1)
How Snow Arrives	4	(1)
The Watch	5	(2)
About the Moth	7	(1)
Confessional	8	(1)
Summer Anniversary	9	(2)
Bird Crashing Into Window	11	(1)
How Did It Get Inside?	12	(1)
To the Mortician's Son	13	(1)
Bougainvillea	14	(1)
Snow Day	15	(1)
Twenty-First Century	16	(1)
The Missing Mountain	17	(4)
Singing, 5 A.M.	21	(1)
Out of Whole Cloth	22	(1)
Their Weight	23	(1)
Mine Own John Clare	24	(2)
Elegy for a Long-Dead Friend	26	(2)
A Winter Feeding	28	(1)
Spelunker	29	(1)
The Messenger	30	(4)
A Line from Robert Desnos Used to Commemorate George ``Sonny'' Took--the--Shield, Fort Belknap, Montana	34	(1)
Biggar, Scotland, September 1976	35	(2)
Medea's Oldest Son	37	(1)
Lost Horizon	38	(3)
Aubade	41	(1)
Boat Rental	42	(2)
Common Flicker	44	(1)
Invocation to the Heart	45	(2)
A Night at the Window	47	(1)
The Lift	48	(2)
To a Chameleon	50	(1)
Night Story	51	(1)
Turkey Vultures	52	(1)
In May	53	(2)
Shelley's Guitar	55	(2)
Bardo	57	(1)
The Next Night	58	(3)
Notes	61	(2)
Acknowledgments	63

Excerpts

BIRDS APPEARING IN A DREAMOne had feathers like a blood-streaked koi, another a tail of color-coded wires. One was a blackbird stretching orchid wings, another a flicker with a wounded head.All flew like leaves fluttering to escape, bright, circulating in burning air, and all returned when the air cleared. One was a kingfisher trapped in its bower,deep in the ground, miles from water. Everything is real and everything isnt. Some had names and some didnt. Named and nameless shapes of birds,at night my hand can touch your feathers and then I wipe the vernix from your wings, you who have made bright things from shadows, you who have crossed the distances to roost in me. HOW SNOW ARRIVESThe pine trees stood without snow, though snow was in the air, a day or two away, forming in the place where singing forms the air."Mother?" is what I heard my mother say, said in such a way she knew her mother didnt know her, as if they stood beneath the trees and breathed the singing air.How frail the weather when its face is blank or, startled, turns to find its startled self in a childs voice, flake by flake of the arriving snow."Mother?" is what I say, as if I didnt know her, standing blank and startled where she stands beneath the trees amid the singing air. THE WATCHThree days after our friend died, having dropped to his knees at the feet of his teammates, we are sitting in a long, narrow, windowless chapel, staring at his casket that runs parallel to the pews. Its like a balance beam or a bench you could sit on- floral sprays around it, a wooden lectern behind, and a priest nobody knew, a man Id seen in the parking lot, pulling on a beret and stamping out a cigarette, all in one move, as he emerged from his car, holding a black book. And now he is reassuring us that our friend is in a better place, that God, too soon, has called him home, a mystery faith endures. Occasionally he looks down to check his watch, the habit of a man who always has a next place to be, which must be why he barely stays to finish the job. Our friend had the most beautiful voice and his guitar was as cool and smart, soulful in its registers. When he played, he gave his body to the music, his eyes closed sometimes and his head bent, sheltering what he made of himself, his fingers knowing the next place and the next-his voice, too- taking each of us with him. ABOUT THE MOTHIf you think the dead understand silence, then why do they light their hemsand burn in dresses? Why do they fan their wings against screens and windows as if they wanted in?Why do they show their wiry contraptions dusty with age and almost useless?They only want to wake us with their light unraveled from upper darkness.They only want to hear us speak our reassurances. Love will conquer, the heart endures.And when theyve left-flames, dust- and frantic-we want them back,not the friends and parents they once had been but their new presences, sharp, unequivocal,buoyant i

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Excerpted from Dark Wild Realm by Michael Collier
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