Whale Day

August 28, 2020

In his 13th collection, former U.S. Poet Laureate Collins presents poems that strike a balance between fact and fiction, description and whimsy. Travel, friendship, love, and walking an aged dog are all topics here, but a significant number focus on mortality--whether the poet's own or that of friends and relatives. Their tone is often light, but beneath the humor is a quest to understand what happens before dying and after; one riffs on cremains, opining that "Scattering is the option du jour." At heart, Collins is a storyteller, as showcased in "Downpour," whose speaker writes the names of recently deceased friends on the back of a shopping list. Leaving the supermarket, he suddenly realizes he forgot Terry O'Shea and the bananas and bread: "And that is when I set out, / ...walking as if in a procession honoring the dead." Some poems miss the mark, as in a poem that quotes C�zanne's wonderful observation that "a single carrot, / if painted in a completely fresh way, / would be enough to set off a revolution" but too predictably leaps to Bugs Bunny and Beatrix Potter. Yet the best poems offer moments of sheer magic that take readers to places never imagined. VERDICT Not Collins's best collection but a solid one that all libraries will want for its emotional resonance during difficult times.--Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2020
As in his previous, beloved poetry collections, Collins (The Rain in Portugal, 2016) encapsulates life with both bonhomie and mordancy. Observing in his seventh decade that he has entered the quiet cardigan harbor of my life, he offers pared down, courtly, and wistful poems, but Collins still ambushes the reader with clashes between the profound and the prosaic. The poet somberly records the names of his dead, then later uses the reverse side of the paper to jot down a shopping list. A poet of home and habit, writing of coffee and pets, Collins is also a world traveler, offering striking impressions of different lands and recording poignant and exhilarating time travels, including a return to his father's clattering, smoky 1950s office. His free-roaming imagination even carries him down into the hidden world of whales, who inspire the title poem's question, So is it too much to ask that one day a year / be set aside for keeping in mind / . . . the multitude of these mammoth creatures. Collins delights, skewers, and enlightens.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)