A History of Small Life on a Windy Planet

Martha Collins

ISBN 10: 0820315052 / ISBN 13: 9780820315058

Published by University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 1993

About this Item

First printing, full number line (1-5). Inscribed, signed, and dated by the author on the title page: "For Mary Alice Matthews / Still my muse, after all these grateful years-- / Martha Collins / December 1996." Collins's third book of poems, it was a co-winner of the 1990 Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award. Book is tight and unmarked; spine is slightly slanted; spine and wraps uncreased; no edgewear. Sleeve protected. Seller Inventory # 001793

Bibliographic Details

Title: A History of Small Life on a Windy Planet

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia

Publication Date: 1993

Binding: Trade Paperback

Condition: Near Fine

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: First Printing

About this title

Synopsis:

Book by Collins, Martha

From Publishers Weekly:

Collins's ( The Arrangement of Space ) stunning graphic poems achieve a perfect balance of the horrific and the playful. "We bought the guns, our money / burned the crops. / (But hey, kids, we're still / your folks--we name our planes / for girls, our bombs for boys)," she writes in one poem; another begins with the image of "the friendly caboose" passing through farmland and goes on to describe cattle cars carrying children to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps. With a few deft strokes, Collins endows the merely topical (the Gulf War, the news story about a murdered woman whose intestines were torn out) with universal dimensions. Poems rewriting fairy tales are every bit the equal of similar efforts by Anne Sexton. The intensity of all of Collins's poems might be their most memorable quality, but such fervor could not be realized if she did not have impeccable facility with language. She delights in wordplay: "The funeral march is a children's chant: /dum-dum-dum, he is dumb-and-done-and-gone." The volume's arrangement expertly juxtaposes related themes, resembling a focussed camera's panning, stopping now here, now there.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.