On page 27. I took a nap and, when I woke, noticed that I'd been dreaming in Billy-speak. . . .


There are several good poems here. Much to admire for sure. And there are some not-so-good poems here. Scratch head. Turn page. It makes you wonder if everything he writes, good or bad, goes into the book.

He's self-deprecating and likable, witty, and sometimes humorous. But sometimes I feel as though the attempts at humor are strained or stretched too thin. Collins always seems to be caught up in a daydream, as if he has no particular work to do, place to go. He can idly muse about taking dead people (whose names he glimpses on headstones) for a ride on his copper-colored bicycle or make a sort of duck out of his hand and talk nonsense to it. There's no one listening, after all. Except we are. And sometimes I wish he actually had something more to say.


One of my favorite poems here was the first one in the book.

Grave

What do you think of my new glasses
I asked as I stood under a shade tree

before the joined grave of my parents,

and what followed was a long silence

that descended on the rows of the dead
and on the fields and the woods beyond,

one of the one hundred kinds of silence

according to the Chinese belief,
each one distinct from the others,

but the differences being so faint
that only a few special monks

were able to tell one from another.

They make you look very scholarly,

I heard my mother say
once I lay down on the ground

and pressed an ear into the soft grass.
Then I rolled over and pressed
my other ear to the ground,

the ear my father likes to speak into,

but he would say nothing,
and I could not find a silence

among the one hundred Chinese silences
that would fit the one that he created
even though I was the one

who had just made up the business

of the one hundred Chinese silences—
the Silence of the Night Boat,

and the Silence of the Lotus,

cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell

only deeper and softer, like petals, at its farthest edges.

(Published in The Atlantic)



Then there's "Feedback."

The woman who wrote from Phoenix
after my reading there

to tell me they were still talking about it

just wrote again
to tell me that they had stopped.



To be fair, here's an example of one I just think is bad. So you can decide for yourself.

Night and Day

Funny how that works,
the breathing all day then it continuing
into the night
when I am absent from the company of the wakeful
oblivious even to the bedroom windows
and the ghost dance of the curtains
but still breathing
and turning in bed
pulling the covers tight around me
maybe caught in the irons of a dream
like that one about the birds, but
more like an evil society of birds
a kind of neighborhood watch group
throwing a block party
with the usual balloons and folding chairs
and tables covered with covered dishes
and many children running
in circles or jagged lines
only everyone with bird heads, bigger than life,
even the children with bird heads
and yes, you guessed it
the birds up in the trees
have little human faces
and they are all talking amongst themselves
about the cloudy weather
and the bushes laden with berries
as if none of it were the least bit funny.

(Published in Knockout)

Or how about:

My Hero

Just as the hare is zipping across the finish line,
the tortoise has stopped once again
by the roadside,
this time to stick out his neck
and nibble a bit of sweet grass,
unlike the previous time
when he was distracted
by a bee humming in the heart of a wildflower.

(Published in Superstition Review)


Yes, we know that Collins sees himself, or wants to portray himself, as the tortoise, taking his own sweet time to nibble the grass and smell the flowers along the way. Can't deny that there's something to be said for that. Not sure it's enough to warrant poem after poem.

Fine as light fare. Folksy. Just the thing for those people who like to brag that they don't really read poetry, but this is the kind of poetry they like.

And I really do like Collins. Yes, really. But there are collections I liked better than this one.