Questions About Angels: Poems (The National Poetry Series) - Softcover

Collins, Billy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0688107311 ISBN 13: 9780688107314

Publisher: Quill, 1991

Synopsis

This collection of poems deals with such themes as a history teacher who lies about the past in order to protect his children, and a wolf who reads fairy tales until he enters one

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Reviews

Smack-dab in the middle of this collection is the delightful "Purity," a poem detailing Collins's macabre writing process. On Wednesdays, in the late afternoon, the poet goes to his study and sheds his clothes. He then removes his flesh--"so that what I write will be pure, / completely rinsed of the carnal"--and takes out each of his organs so as not "to hear their ancient rhythms / when I am trying to tap out my own drumbeat." "Purity" is about ideas rather than feelings, but the poet executes his metaphors with perfect precision and a bravura wit. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about most of the other poems here. Collins's images are often strange and wonderful but too frequently his poems are constricted by the novelty of a unifying metaphor. In "Cliche," Collins ( Pok er face ) writes about his life as "an open book," and all that we eventually end up learning is that he "loves to feel the daily turning of the pages." We can admire the scope of Collins's imagination, but his poems rarely induce an emotional reaction, precluding us from any affinity with his experience. This volume was selected by Edward Hirsch for the 1990 National Poetry Series.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This book, one of five winners of the 1990 National Poetry Series competition, is Collins's fourth book of poems. Unrhymed, playfully subdued in tone, and somewhat restrained by a loose hexameter line, Collins's poems might be characterized as metaphysical musings in a whimsical mode. The poet mocks human inflexibility ("the only question you ever hear is about/ the little dance floor on the head of a pin"), hankers after the American pastoral (in "American Sonnet"), and imagines being transformed by Kafka into the New York Public Library: "I would feel the pages of books turning inside me like butterflies./ I would stare over Fifth Avenue with a perfectly straight face." Although occasionally glib or bland in themselves, these poems build upon each other, and those who read this volume from start to finish will be moved by the accumulated power of a poet who is not afraid to be alone with his imaginary, dissembling landscapes. For general and academic collections.
-Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Quill
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0688107311
• ISBN 13: 9780688107314
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 105