Picnic, Lightning

March 1, 1998
The easy swing of Collins' lines reflects his love of jazz and his ready response to beauty; the warmth of his voice emanates from his instinct for pleasure and his propensity toward humor. The title poem, for instance, is an improvisation on a terse description of a fatal freak accident in Nabokov's "Lolita" in which Collins, ever on the lookout for that old silver lining, or the happy bafflement of a koan, turns his contemplation of "the instant hand of Death / always ready to burst forth" into a subtle celebration of life. It's all in the mind, he implies, writing most ebulliently and perceptively about the realm of the imagination: an evening spent reading the "F" section of a single-volume encyclopedia becomes the catalyst for a hilarious sequence of thoughts, and a tour through the candy-smooth pages of a Victoria's Secret catalog evolves into a performance of great wit and sweet self-mockery. Collins is jazzman and Buddhist, charmer and prince. ((Reviewed March 1, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)