The Ledge

by Michael Collier

Overview

A new collection of poetry by the director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, which celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2000. "Dark splendor" are the words Edward Hirsch uses to describe the poems of the award-winning author Michael Collier. Collier's new work balances on the ledge between the everyday and the unknown, revealing the hidden depths of relationships. The poems in THE LEDGE are narrative and colloquial, musical and crystalline, at once intimate and sharp-edged. They render the world beautifully mysterious as they slide into unexpected emotional territory. A son loses his father's favorite hammer, and with it his trust. In "The Wave," the enthusiastic crowd at a baseball game rises and sits in frightening unison, belying their hopeful cheering. In "Fathom and League," a dive two miles deep in the Pacific reveals the submerged volcanoes of the ocean and the soul. In many of the poems, the familiar animal world - of dogs and sparrows and possums in the yard - transfigures the view through a window. As director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Collier has reinvigorated one of America's most important literary institutions. The artistry and directness of THE LEDGE confirm his place among the most significant poets of his generation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780618219100
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/17/2002
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Michael Collier has been the director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and has taught English at the University of Maryland, College Park. His previous volumes of poetry are THE CLASP AND OTHER POEMS, THE FOLDED HEART, THE NEIGHBOR, and THE LEDGE, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Collier is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, NEA fellowships, and the Discovery/The Nation Award, among other honors. He resides in Maryland.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt

A Real-Life Drama

This dog standing in the middle of the street,
tail stiff, fur bushy with fear, and a pedigree rabbit,
its neck broken and bleeding beneath his paws,
might have been forgiven or simply taken away

and shot under different circumstances
and no one would have said much, except his owner
who'd gone out into the yard at the start
of the commotion, having been involved

at other times with the dog's truancies, and yelled,
"Bosco, Bosco, goddamnit!" but unavailing,
and everyone understanding that once more Bosco
had been taken over by the dark corner of his nature.

But this other sentiment we shared as well: the man
who'd raised the rabbit shouldn't husband something
so rare and beautiful he couldn't keep it
from the likes of Bosco.

Table of Contents

I
	Argos	3
	Safe	5
	Ghazal	7
	My Crucifixion	8
	Moon Valley Country Club	9
	A Last Supper	10
	The Word	12
	The Snake	14
	The New Possum	15
	The Hammer	16
II
	A Real - Life Drama	21
	The Swimmer	22
	The Farrier	24
	The Choice	25
	Christmas Train Park at the Arbutus Firehouse	27
	The Lessons	29
	Catbird	31
	All Souls	32
	Time to Move	34
	A Remainder	36
	The Wave	38
	Brave Sparrow	40
III
	Pay - Per - View	45
	Cerberus	47
	Swans	48
	Hummingbird Aviary	49
	Ghazal of the Sahara	50
	Long Summer	51
	Fathom and League	52
	The Blame	54
	An Awful Story	55
	All Darkness	56
	The Dolphin	57
	Keats and Francesca	59
	Pax Geologica	60

What People are Saying About This

Tom Sleigh

Tom Sleigh

Michael Collier's genius for depicting the world of things starkly illuminates the spiritual hungers that drive human making and the intricate, at times brutal, psychological mechanisms that underpin our domestic and social arrangements.

Editorial Reviews

"Michael Collier's genius for depicting the world of things starkly illuminates the spiritual hungers that drive human making and the intricate, at times brutal, psychological mechanisms that underpin our domestic and social arrangements." - Tom Sleigh —

From the Publisher

Collier builds many of his poems around a single incident, whether his speaker is caught lying, in naked boyhood, on a bathroom floor while his sisters conduct a mock-crucifixion, or is simply being captivated by a man who crashes through a country club's plate-glass door. In this, Collier's fourth book, such ruminations still have their descriptive charms, but generally lack the dramatic urgency necessary to sustain the book as a whole. At times, Collier attempts to up the ante by invoking the mythical likes of an Odysseus or Sisyphus, but such figures often end up being trivialized. In "Pay-Per-View," for example, Collier compares the distorted images of a scrambled hotel porno flick to Pandora's "winged souls that once escaped/ from her exquisite jar--the shadows of our pains, the venom/ carriers of our desires." A plethora of animal poems prove capable vehicles for some nice phrasal and observational turns: a snake's skin is "a loose diamond basket weave"; "The New Opossum" is an "upholder of middle-class values,/ and link to a romantic past"; while the "Brave Sparrow" is playfully exhorted to "Stay where you are, you lit fuse, you dull spark of saltpeter and sulfur." Still, domestic scenes that confront a young son with "the puddle of urine/ beneath the toilet" or the rabbit-killing dog of "A Real-Life Drama" don't reverberate in the manner Collier seems to be aiming for, making images like "[h]is cock,/ a huge suppurating rudder, stirred the sulfuric/ ocean of his realm" (describing Cerberus) seem desperate stays against bourgeois ennui. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The first poem in Collier's The Ledge contrasts the youthful reader who plunges ahead while reading Homer and the mature reader who lingers. It's an apt beginning to this fourth collection from the director of the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference because one should linger over these elegant yet penetrating poems, which reading after reading yield startling truths. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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