My American Night

By Christopher P. Collins

This collection of lyric poems wrestles with a sense of self that has become fragmented by the experience of war. Christopher P. Collins has taken his tours in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, extracted their emotional shrapnel, and examined their toll on his civilian life. He considers the two sides of himself that have been wrought in these parallel lives. One is the self of the citizen-soldier, and the other is the self of the husband and father. His poems reveal the brutal ways in which these selves collide and bleed into one another.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Release date: Feb 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780820352060

Christopher P. Collins

CHRISTOPHER P. COLLINS teaches composition and creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. He is a former military officer and a twelve-year veteran of the U.S. Army Reserve, having completed three overseas combat deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the 2015 winner of Farmingdale’s Paumanok Poetry Award and has published one poetry chapbook, Gathering Leaves for War. He lives in Independence, Kentucky.

Book preview

THE GEORGIA POETRY PRIZE

The University of Georgia Press established the

Georgia Poetry Prize in 2016 in partnership with the

Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State University,

and the University of Georgia. The prize is supported

by the Bruce and Georgia McEver Fund for the

Arts and Environment.

MY AMERICAN NIGHT

MY

AMERICAN

NIGHT

POEMS BY

Christopher P. Collins

© 2018 by the University of Georgia Press

Athens, Georgia 30602

www.ugapress.org

All rights reserved

Designed by Erin Kirk New

Set in Adobe Minion Pro

Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore

The paper in this book meets the guidelines

for permanence and durability of the Committee on

Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the

Council on Library Resources.

Most University of Georgia Press titles are

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Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Collins, Christopher P., 1974– author.

Title: My American night : poems / by Christopher P. Collins.

Description: Athens, Georgia : University of Georgia Press,

[2018] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017025184 | ISBN 9780820352053 (softcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780820352060 (ebook)

Classification: LCC PS3603.O45265 A6 2018 | DDC 811/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025184

—for Angela, Patrick, and Sophia

Contents

Acknowledgments

Some Days

I

Ordering Disorder