Aimless Love: A Selection of Poems

Two-term Poet Laureate Collins offers up this compilation of poems from the chapbooks he published over the last 12 years. Collins has a clear, plainspoken voice that makes for an easy, even relaxing, listening experience. At the same time, the poems he’s collected here are often biting. In “High,” Collins mentions how one October morning he (or his narrator) is “only behind a double espresso /and a single hit of anti-depressant,” yet feels like he’s “walking with Jane Austen /to borrow the jargon of the streets.” Collins narrates this poem—and indeed many others—with a sort of dry amusement. Or take “A Dog on His Master,” which is both poignant and funny (it is, after all, written from a dog’s point of view): “As young as I look, /I am growing older faster than he... I will pass him one day /and take the lead /the way I do on our walks in the woods.” It’s a sparse, beautiful poem, and its power builds gradually through the last stanza, where Collins slows the pace of his reading to allow listeners can ruminate on his final lines. Overall, Collins does a solid and sometimes transcendent job reading his own work. A Random House hardcover. (Oct.)