Some Things Words Can Do [Includes A History of Small Life on a Windy Planet, orig. pub. in 1993]

This volume brings together Collins collection, Some Things Words Can Do, and her prize winning book, A History of Small Like on a Windy Planet. In A History of Small Life, Martha Collins has a unique ability to fix each passing phrase of a swiftly moving, rootless society in triumphant style. Her new poems explore our capacity for violence and subtle forms of cruelty, as well as the disturbing power of words themselves to hurt and divide us. She also reminds us that the language of the lyric is most restorative when it makes demands upon us; when it is, as in these deeply intelligent poems, both graceful and athletic.