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    Dark Wild Realm
    Dark Wild Realm
    Dark Wild Realm
    Ebook68 pages28 minutes

    Dark Wild Realm

    By Michael Collier

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    About this ebook

    The award-winning poet Michael Collier’s elegiac fifth collection is haunted by spectral figures and a strange, vivid chorus of birds: From a cardinal that crashes into a window to a gathering of turkey vultures, Collier engages birds as myth-makers and lively messengers, carrying memories from lost friends. The mystery of death and the vital absence it creates are the real subjects of the book. Collier juxtaposes moments of quotidian revelation, like waking to the laughing sounds of bird song, with the drama of Greek tragedy, taking on voices from Medea. As Vanity Fair praised, his poems “tread nimbly between moments of everyday transcendence and spiritual pining.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateAug 23, 2012
    ISBN9780544102224
    Dark Wild Realm
    Author

    Michael Collier

    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.

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      Book preview

      Dark Wild Realm - Michael Collier

      [Image]

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Table of Contents

      Copyright

      Dedication

      A Prologue

      BIRDS APPEARING IN A DREAM

      HOW SNOW ARRIVES

      THE WATCH

      ABOUT THE MOTH

      CONFESSIONAL

      SUMMER ANNIVERSARY

      BIRD CRASHING INTO WINDOW

      HOW DID IT GET INSIDE?

      TO THE MORTICIAN'S SON

      BOUGAINVILLEA

      SNOW DAY

      TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

      THE MISSING MOUNTAIN

      SINGING, 5 A.M.

      OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH

      THEIR WEIGHT

      MINE OWN JOHN CLARE

      ELEGY FOR A LONG-DEAD FRIEND

      A WINTER FEEDING

      SPELUNKER

      THE MESSENGER

      A LINE FROM ROBERT DESNOS USED TO COMMEMORATE GEORGE SONNY TOOK-THE-SHIELD, FORT BELKNAP, MONTANA

      BIGGAR, SCOTLAND, SEPTEMBER 1976

      MEDEA'S OLDEST SON

      LOST HORIZON

      AUBADE

      BOAT RENTAL

      COMMON FLICKER

      INVOCATION TO THE HEART

      A NIGHT AT THE WINDOW

      THE LIFT

      TO A CHAMELEON

      NIGHT STORY

      TURKEY VULTURES

      IN MAY

      SHELLEY'S GUITAR

      BARDO

      THE NEXT NIGHT

      Notes

      Acknowledgments

      About The Author

      Copyright © 2006 by Michael Collier

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

      For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

      Visit our Web site: www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Collier, Michael, date.

      Dark wild realm / Michael Collier.

      p. cm.

      ISBN-13: 978-0-618-58222-8

      ISBN-10: 0-618-58222-3

      1. Birds—Poetry. 2. Human-animal

      relationships—Poetry. I.Title.

      PS3553.0474645D37 2006

      811'.54—dc22 2005024759

      Printed in the United States of America

      Book design by Robert Overholtzer

      WOZ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Katherine

      A Prologue

      The mind shapes bodies

      that take on other shapes,

      changes no one but gods should make.

      And so I ask the gods

      to let this song lead deftly,

      back and forth through time,

      until it finds the shape

      of the world's beginning.

      BIRDS APPEARING IN A DREAM

      One had feathers like a blood-streaked koi,

      another a tail of color-coded wires.

      One was a blackbird stretching orchid wings,

      another a flicker with a wounded head.

      All flew like leaves fluttering to escape,

      bright, circulating in burning air,

      and all returned when the air cleared.

      One was a kingfisher trapped in its bower,

      deep in the ground, miles from water.

      Everything is real and everything isn't.

      Some had names and some didn't.

      Named and nameless shapes of

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