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Dark Wild Realm
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Dark Wild Realm Hardback - 2006

by Michael Collier

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Summary

A haunting orchestra of birds sing through this elegiac new collection by a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

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From the publisher

A haunting orchestra of birds sing through this elegiac new collection by a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

Details

  • Title Dark Wild Realm
  • Author Michael Collier
  • Binding Hardback
  • Edition 1st
  • Pages 63
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Houghton Mifflin, Boston
  • Publication date 2006-04-02
  • ISBN 9780618582228 / 0618582223
  • Weight 0.49 lbs (0.22 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.04 x 5.88 x 0.49 in (20.42 x 14.94 x 1.24 cm)
  • Category Poetry
  • Library of Congress subjects Human-animal relationships, Birds
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2005024759
  • Dewey Decimal Code 811.54

Excerpt

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 birds,

at night my hand can touch your feathers and then I wipe the vernix from your wings, you who have made bright things from shadows, you who have crossed the distances to roost in me.

HOW SNOW ARRIVES

The pine trees stood without snow, though snow was in the air, a day or two away, forming in the place where singing forms the air.

“Mother?” is what I heard my mother say, said in such a way she knew her mother didn’t know her, as if they stood beneath the trees and breathed the singing air.

How frail the weather when its face is blank or, startled, turns to find its startled self in a child’s voice, flake by flake of the arriving snow.

“Mother?” is what I say, as if I didn’t know her, standing blank and startled where she stands beneath the trees amid the singing air.

THE WATCH

Three days after our friend died, having dropped to his knees at the feet of his teammates, we are sitting in a long, narrow, windowless chapel, staring at his casket that runs parallel to the pews.
It’s like a balance beam or a bench you could sit on— floral sprays around it, a wooden lectern behind, and a priest nobody knew, a man I’d seen in the parking lot, pulling on a beret and stamping out a cigarette, all in one move, as he emerged from his car, holding a black book.
And now he is reassuring us that our friend is in a better place, that God, too soon, has called him home, a mystery faith endures.
Occasionally he looks down to check his watch, the habit of a man who always has a next place to be, which must be why he barely stays to finish the job.
Our friend had the most beautiful voice and his guitar was as cool and smart, soulful in its registers. When he played, he gave his body to the music, his eyes closed sometimes and his head bent, sheltering what he made of himself, his fingers knowing the next place and the next—his voice, too— taking each of us with him.

ABOUT THE MOTH

If you think the dead understand silence, then why do they light their hems

and burn in dresses? Why do they fan their wings against screens and windows as if they wanted in?

Why do they show their wiry contraptions dusty with age and almost useless?

They only want to wake us with their light unraveled from upper darkness.

They only want to hear us speak our reassurances.
Love will conquer, the heart endures.

And when they’ve left—flames, dust— and frantic—we want them back,

not the friends and parents they once had been but their new presences, sharp, unequivocal,

buoyant in their crossing back and forth, inhabiting the condition they’ve become.

CONFESSIONAL

I was waiting for the frequency of my attention to be tuned to an inner station—all mind but trivial matter, wavelengths modulated like topiary swans on a topiary sea, and not quite knowing where the tide would take me.

In the darkness where I kneeled, I heard whispering, like dry leaves. It had a smell—beeswax, smoke; a color—black; and a shape like a thumb.
That’s when the door slid open and the light that years ago

spoke to me, spoke again, and through the veil, an arm, like a hand-headed snake, worked through, seven-fingered, each tipped with sin. What the snake couldn’t see, I saw, even as it felt what I felt or heard what I said.

Then along my arms boils and welts rose, on my back scourge marks burned. I counted nails, thorns.
In my mind, inside my own death’s head, I could hear: “Please, forgive me. Do not punish me for what I cannot be.”

Copyright © 2006 by Michael Collier. Reprinted with permission by Houghton Mifflin Company.

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Dark Wild Realm
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Dark Wild Realm

by Collier, Michael

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780618582228 / 0618582223
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Used - Good. Good condition. Good dust jacket. A copy that has been read but remains intact. May contain markings such as bookplates, stamps, limited notes and highlighting, or a few light stains.
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Dark Wild Realm

Dark Wild Realm

by Michael Collier

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2006. Hardcover. Very Good. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.Dust jacket quality is not guaranteed.
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Dark Wild Realm
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Dark Wild Realm

by Collier, Michael

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Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 63pp. Wear boards, soiling, DJ: sticker remnant front, rubbing, wear extremities.. 1st. Hb. G+/G+.
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Dark Wild Realm: Poems

Dark Wild Realm: Poems

by Collier, Michael

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  • Hardback
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Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Near Fine. 6x0x8. First edition. An excellent copy. 2006 Hard Cover. 63 pp. 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.
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Dark Wild Realm
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Dark Wild Realm

by Michael Collier

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  • Hardback
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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780618582228 / 0618582223
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Dark Wild Realm
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Dark Wild Realm

by Collier, Michael

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Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006. 1st. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. SIGNED. 63 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Spotless and tight copy. Record # 456250
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Dark Wild Realm
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Dark Wild Realm

by Collier, Michael

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  • Hardback
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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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Houghton Mifflin, 2006. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Near Fine. Warmly inscribed by the author on the title page. A Fine unused copy of the First Printing (complete numberline) in a Near Fine jacket.
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Dark Wild Realm [inscribed by Collier]
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Dark Wild Realm [inscribed by Collier]

by Collier, Michael

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Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Hardcover. Fine/near fine. Warmly inscribed by Collier on title page. Octavo, blue cloth backed boards in DJ, 63pp. Book is fine with no discernible wear to book, interior bright and unmarked, binding tight. DJ is near fine with minimal edge wear and rubbing to wraps. Nice!
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DARK WILD REALM
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DARK WILD REALM

by Collier, Michael

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2006. 2006 Collier, Michael DARK WILD REALM Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c2006 first printing 63pp 8vo New copy in d/j.
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Dark Wild Realm
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Dark Wild Realm

by Collier, Michael

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