Martha Collins is the author of nine previous books of poetry, including Admit One: An American Scrapbook, White Papers, and the book-length poem Blue Front, as well as the paired volumes Night Unto Night and Day Unto Day. Collins has also published four
"A strikingly original collection that combines brilliant
storytelling and compelling commentary on ethics and race. . . .
Exquisitely spare, these works recount some of the sinister moments
of American history, quietly pushing readers to learn from those
episodes and consider our collective responsibility for them."
--Washington Post
"An unflinching look at the underpinnings of racism in the U.S. . .
. Her poems are lists, definitions, newspaper pages, historical
time lines, and biographical facts. These diverse poetic forms
highlight the beauty of diversity itself. But Collins never lets up
on the driving themes of unethical treatment and collective
culpability." --Booklist
"Collins goes past the paralyzing silence of white guilt and into
the active language of implication. One feels in her work the
compulsion to discover, and to confront. Poetry is the vehicle of
response for Collins, and we are the richer for having the results
of her grappling. She locates our country's legacy of racism in her
own familial connections, therefore speaking from a position more
like witness than judge." --Solstice Magazine
"Collins' brilliantly disturbing verse leaves us with the grim hope
that imperial whiteness can give way to incendiary witness."
--Radcliffe Magazine
"In Admit One Collins traces the ideological constellation
of scientific racism illustrating how it was used to justify not
just racism, but also colonialism, xenophobia, and the
sterilization of those deemed physically, mentally, or morally
'unfit.'" --Literary Imagination
"Like any scrapbooker, Collins collects and assembles, and largely
lets the scraps do the talking. But when she reveals to us the
collector's hand, injecting the personal like handwritten notes in
the margins, she reminds us that we are not merely witnesses to
history. We are its participants, inheritors, and bloodline. This
is what I want my students to feel, to have the historical brought
to life and made personal. I may have been doing it wrong, but
Collins' poetry offers a path in the right direction."
--masspoetry.org
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