The Dolphin and Other Poems by Marlys Mary Collins

Marlys Mary Collins tells her truths slant, like her poetic ancestor and guardian angel, Emily Dickinson, whose words she echoes when she describes “a percussion / of wind in the ear, beating to the funeral I heard.” These contemplative poems dwell on nature and solitude, but they exult in her existential predicament as she suffers “the blitzkrieg within” but finds herself “Alive, / alive in the random eternal!” The lively six-part title poem is rich in quotable aphorisms such as “Nature has its own way / of closing the mouths of ghosts” and “Keeping busy, isn’t that the key.” Intense but instilled with humor, her jagged-edged verse, a dialogue between guts and heart as well as an intimate shout-out to the unknown reader, sings with “shy ferocity.”

–John Philip Drury, author of Sea Level Rising