Day Unto Day

Book excerpt: The William Carlos Williams Award–winning poet shares a new collection of “musically brilliant, psychologically intricate” meditations on time (Kevin Prufer). This hauntingly spare and subtle poetry collection consists of six sequences: during one month each year, for six years, Martha Collins wrote a short poem each day. With perfectly distilled lines, she captures the aching, liminal beauty of one day becoming another—the slow burn of time passing, the ambiguity of an “old / new leaf” turning over, even as she collages a wide range of material that includes often disturbing news of the world. Writing in the tradition of poetic meditation, Collins shows us the full degree of her mastery—a mature voice, poems with tremendous scope, and lines exceptionally controlled. Here is the work of a seasoned poet at the height of her career.