The Neighbor (Phoenix Poets) - Softcover

Michael Collier is director of the creative writing program at the University of Maryland and the author of seven collections of poetry, including An Individual History, a finalist for the Poet’s Prize, and The Ledge, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
 

Collier's third book of poems is dense with objects, each made particular by precise naming and deft description. Collier's material world, far from being static, is characterized by an unpredictable plasticity whereby both objects -- and their owners -- undergo mirror reversals and sometimes sinister metamorphoses. In "Archimedes," a man stands by a lake with a Coleman lantern, the light drawing the fish: ". . . A flensing / knife strapped to his belt, // blade and handle shaped / like a fish and the fish / in the water, / shaped like the knife." In the poem, "2212 West Flower Street," the neighbor who tied fishing lures, "the hook with its tiny barbs / against his lip," later puts the "barrel of his 30.06 inside his mouth and pulled the trigger." What interests Collier is not irony, although the poems are aware of it, but rather how artifact defines humanity: how the things with which we wrap ourselves bear our names, our faces.
Copyright © 1996, Boston Review. All rights reserved. -- From The Boston Review