The Missing Mountain

I was delighted with my introduction to 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑴𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑴𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏 — a representation of Michael Collier’s body of work. Due to growing up and living in South Africa (I imagine), I’d not encountered his poetry. The 160 page volume of previously published and new poems brings together the presiding influences of Collier’s life, early and later.

Collier, the author of eight collections (including 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑴𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑴𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏) is a poet of warmth, wit, profundity and compassion. Whether writing about an airline disaster, a friendship with a disgraced Catholic bishop, his father’s encounter with Charles Lindbergh, Lebanese beekeepers, a mother’s sewing machine, or a piano in the woods, he does so with scrupulous observation, and a flawless ear.

In an interview with Brian Brodeur on the blog ‘How a Poem Happens’, it is interesting to read Collier’s comments on his process: “Four years from writing to publication is not unusual for one of my poems. I don’t have any rules about this, but such a languorous turnover rate is in keeping with the slow and deliberate approach I’ve developed over the years. I want the sentences to be as interesting, complicated and lucid as possible, and, for me, this takes time …

I prefer poems that find their transcendence and sublimity in the details of the natural world and in the sloppy mess of social interactions. In the end, there’s not one right way of producing poems. What matters is that we write the poems we are capable of writing. Some of us will write poems that have dark glass eyes and long snouts and hang on walls, and some of us will write poems that spread through neighborhoods like a thin sheet of irrigation water”.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑴𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑴𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏 poems are distinctive, memorable and powerful. And, I did shed a tear when I read ‘Penn Relays’ and ‘To the Muse of the Dying’.

A huge thank you to @NetGalley and @uchicagopress for a DRC of 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑴𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑴𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏: 𝑵𝒆𝒘 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑺𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝑷𝒐𝒆𝒎𝒔 (𝑺𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒅 𝑬𝒅𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏) by Michael Collier.