Day Unto Day: Poems

by Martha Collins

Martha Collins offers haunting reflections on time and other subjects in Day unto Day , a spare and subtle seventh collection. The book consists of six during one month each year, for six years, Collins wrote a short poem each day. With perfectly distilled lines, she captures the aching, liminal beauty of one day becoming another—the slow burn of time passing, the ambiguity of an “old / new leaf” turning over, even as she collages a wide range of material that includes often disturbing news of the world. Writing in the tradition of poetic meditation, Collins shows us the full degree of her mastery—a mature voice, poems with tremendous scope, and lines exceptionally controlled. Here is the work of a seasoned poet at the height of her career.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 2014

About the author

Born in Nebraska and raised in Iowa, Martha Collins was educated at Stanford University and the University of Iowa. She founded the creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, and for ten years served as Pauline Delaney Professor of creative writing at Oberlin College. She served as Distinguished Visiting Writer at Cornell University in 2010, and currently teaches (and is available for) short-term workshops. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Sarah Lain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martha Collins owns leapfrogging in Day Unto Day. I wish I could go back to my creative writing students and say: this is how you do it:

off, one by one, or war
time lots, all at once.

(from “23”)

“Once, there was a girl, a boy, end”

(from “24”)

At the close of one small end, begins another. The short verses are haibun-like in nature, in the sense that they sit with an image, leave it, and let it travel to another.

The absolutely beautiful truth, for me, came in the sense of weaving in and out of love and war. One moment: pear agave cholla; the next: bombs and war gods and empires. I have internalized all of this as a person living in America right now, but I had not thought about how I’ve internalized it until Collins showed me myself. I thought: wow. This is how the mind functions in these times, but Collins brings a new level of mindfulness:

Beyond the Wall
that grays Gaza, dust
over dust of disturbed
bodies,
wall with drawn-
in windows, winter mirror

These enjambments carry so much weight and emotion. “in windows, winter mirror” shows this sense of inward-looking and cold reflection that one faces in wartime. The book as a whole can be considered a prolonged meditation and could be read slowly in such a state. Deeply powerful and human.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Occupying a ground between Susan Howe and mainstream contemporary verse, these are not quite fragmented, not quite cogent reflections, nicely done but need trimming.

[Zlives · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fruity and dull.

[Rich Law]

'Grayed In' is particularly spectacular