Dark Wild Realm Read Free Page A

shibboleths
for torture, all the archaic
pleading that made you
smother what I tried to say
    Â 
by saying,"Come with me,
inhabit the inch of air
between our forms and their
vaporous happenstance."
    Â 
But no one talks like that,
not even the dead when they speak
through you, though
it's what I heard floating in the spaces.
    Â 
It's what fed the flames
of your command
that all of me resisted
even as I followed.

Notes
    "The Watch." Dedicated to the memory of Dennis Casey.
    Â 
    "Bird Crashing into Window." A phrase from line 123 of
Lycidas
is incorporated into line 18. Dedicated to the memory ofAgha Shahid Ali.
    Â 
    "The Messenger." Lines 1136–1230 of Euripides'
Medea.
    Â 
    "A Line from Robert Desnos Used to Commemorate George 'Sonny' Took-the-Shield, Fort Belknap, Montana." George Took-the-Shield was fifty-three when he died of cancer. He was an Assiniboin who was instrumental in repatriating his ancestors' remains held by the Smithsonian Institution. He was an artist, writer, and poet.
    Â 
    "Biggar, Scotland, September 1976." Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978) was the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve, Scotland's greatest poet of the twentieth century. His masterpiece is the 2,685-line
A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle
(1926).
    Â 
    "Invocation to the Heart." Pig ventricular valves and nylon are materials used to repair the human heart.
    Â 
    "Shelley's Guitar."
Shelley's Guitar: A Bicentenary Exhibition of Manuscripts, First Editions and Relics of Percy Bysshe Shelley
was sponsored by the Bodleian Library, 1992. The lines quoted in the poem are from "With a guitar. To Jane," which Shelley wrote for Jane Williams.
    Â 
    "Bardo." Dedicated to the memory of Ben Branch.

Acknowledgments
    G RATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT to the editors of the publications where the following poems first appeared:
Agni Review,
"Spelunker,""Invocation to the Heart."
Alaska Quarterly Review,
"Boat Rental."
Atlantic Monthly,
"Bardo."
Bellevue Review,
"How Snow Arrives."
Blue Mesa Review,
"A Night at the Window."
Georgia Review,
"To a Chameleon," "Summer Anniversary," "Twenty-first Century."
Grove Rerview,
"Aubade," "How Did I Get Inside?," "Medea's Oldest Son," "Night Story," "The Watch."
Gulf Coast,
"Elegy for a Long-Dead Friend."
Kenyon Review,
"Snow Day," "The Missing Mountain," "Confessional," "Bird Crashing into Window," "
Lost Horizon." The Nation,
"In May."
Ploughshares,
"The Next Night," "Their Weight," "Mine Own John Clare," "Birds Appearing in a Dream," "A Line from Robert Desnos Used to Commemorate George 'Sonny' Took-the-Shield, Fort Belknap, Montana."
Rivendell,
"A Winter Feeding."
Slate,
"Shelley's Guitar," "The Lift."
Sonora Review,
"Bougainvillea," "Out of Whole Cloth Made."
TriQuarterly,
"Common Flicker," "Turkey Vultures."
    Â 
    I wish to thank the University of Maryland for a creative and performing
arts summer grant, which contributed to the completion of this book,
and Middlebury College for its ongoing support.
    Â 
    My gratitude, thanks, and affection go to Liz Arnold, Daniel Hall, Edward Hirsch, Jim Longenbach, Tom Mallon, John Murphy, Howard Norman, Steve Orlen, Stanley Plumly, Buzz Poverman, Michael Ryan, Alan Shapiro, Tom Sleigh, Elizabeth Spires, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Josh Weiner, and Dean Young.
    Â 
    In memory: Agha Shahid Ali, Ben Branch, Dennis Casey, Amanda Davis, Roland Flint,William and Emily Maxwell, and George Took-the-Shield.
    Â 
    And with love to David and Robert.

About The Author
    M ICHAEL C OLLIER is the director of the Bread Loaf
Writers' Conference and teaches English at the
University of Maryland, College Park. He has published
four previous collections of poetry, most recently
The Ledge,
a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times
Book 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, and is a former poet laureate
of Maryland. He lives in Maryland.