Description
Book SynopsisA collection of poetry spanning the career of distinguished poet Michael Collier.
Trade Review"The title poem of Michael Collier's newest collection captures the poet at his best. "The Missing Mountain," originally published in
Dark Wild Realm (2006), combines images of specific objects and memories with lush description and satisfying philosophical twists. The unrhymed yet tightly controlled stanzas are composed of lines with a natural musical quality, somewhere between loose tetrameter and everyday speech." * Seven Days *
“Within the arc of this beautiful book, readers will find two sources of wonder: that Collier’s gift for poetry was, from the beginning, complete, and that the poems have also found a way to deepen with each succeeding volume. What becomes of faith when its ceremonies are etched in the heart but its communities begin to falter? What becomes of kindness when its paths are strewn with grief? The quality of attention is everything in these pages: the missing mountain is the one we climb and, climbing, summon into being.” -- Linda Gregerson, author of Prodigal
“In this superb collection, Collier occupies the rarefied air of a particular lineage of American poets running from Frost and Meredith through Strand and Voigt. His work is that unmistakable, profound, and true. To manage such degrees of depth and peril requires a most scrupulous craft; and to wield such classical ironies—engagement met with the threat of effacement, a piercing wit sparking off an even more profound soulfulness—takes a poet of consummate skill, passion, and wisdom. Collier is just such a poet.” -- David Baker, author of Swift: New and Selected Poems
“For over three decades, Collier has explored 'the sparkling circuitry of the universe.' With his telescopic eye, he has traced the delicate contours of the living and the dead so that we might see them more clearly and truly. The result is the exquisite poems of
The Missing Mountain come together like a star chart to remind us that we are each one brilliant point in the constellation that we call the story of our lives. One would be hard pressed to find better company than this radiant book.” -- Tomás Q. Morín, author of Machete
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments from My Bishop and Other Poems (2018) Meadow My Bishop Anecdote of the Piano in the Woods Bronze Foot in a Glass Case The Storm Boom Boom A Wild Tom Turkey Len Bias, a Bouquet of Roses, and Ms. Brooks Last Morning with Steve Orlen from An Individual History (2012) An Individual History My Mother of Invention Grandmother with Mink Stole, Sky Harbor Airport, Phoenix, Arizona, 1959 Cyclops At the End of a Ninetieth Summer Brendan’s Hair Piety Doctor Friendly History Rabid Head The Bees of Deir Kifa Embrace Laelaps Six Lines for Louise Bogan from Dark Wild Realm (2006) Birds Appearing in a Dream Confessional Summer Anniversary Bird Crashing into Window The Watch The Missing Mountain Singing, 5 A.M. Mine Own John Clare Elegy for a Long-Dead Friend A Line from Robert Desnos Used to Commemorate George “Sonny” Took-the-Shield, Fort Belknap, Montana Bardo from The Ledge (2000) Argos My Crucifixion The Word The Farrier Ghazal All Souls Brave Sparrow Pay-Per-View Cerberus Pax Geologica from The Neighbor (1995) Archimedes 2212 West Flower Street The House of Being The Barber The Rancher Mission Boulevard The Steam Engine Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors Letter from Mrs. C. G. Vogt The Water Dream from The Folded Heart (1989) North Corridor Spider Tumor Burial The Problem The Heavy Light of Shifting Stars Feedback The Cave from The Clasp (1986) Aquarium White Strawberries In Khabarovsk Bruges Two Girls in a Chair The Clasp New Poems (2021) A Man of Rueful Countenance A True Story about a Cat and a Possum Bee to Keeper Portrait of Two Young Couples Colloquy with a Polish Aunt The Salvation of America Goat on a Pile of Scrap Lumber Cyclist Braking for Two Foxes Crossing a Country Road in Early Morning Morning Crows in a Fresh Mown Field before Rain His Highness’s Dog at Kew Penn Relays Winter Our Felix Randal In Life Bluebirds Poem for a Sixtieth Birthday Today I Can Write To the Muse of Dying Tree beyond Your Window Notes
