The Vesper Room

<p>Kristofer Collins's <em>Vesper Room</em> takes us from specific and concrete places of encounter-a dark bar on Butler Allegheny Cemetery the bus stop-into stations of living friendship love parenthood and into the deeper questions of purpose and mettle. All the while there is careful assessing judging but not limiting. This is not to say there isn't fun. Oh no if you like a good meandering gossipy narrative poem it's found here with references to Cher at her Bob Mackie best and the high and low of popular culture. There is an experience to be had in <em>Vesper Room</em> a fullness. Unlike the poets addressed in Lazy Day Poets I could read this collection again and be rewarded with even more pleasure I feel certain. I'm grateful for <em>Vesper Room</em>. It's an evening prayer of a book.</p><p></p><p>-Doralee Brooks is a poet and educator the  editor of <em>The Gulf Tower Forecasts Rain</em> and  City of Asylum's poet laureate of Allegheny  County 2022-2024.</p><p></p><p>Kristofer Collins writes verse of arresting imagery and turns-of-phrase that lodge in the brain that as Dickinson would say takes the top of your head off so that you know you've read real poetry. These are lyrics at the bar stool of cashed cigarettes and spilled beer. There are few contemporary poets with his batting average; <em>The Vesper Room's</em> preponderance of great poems (all of them in my opinion) is dizzying lyrics simultaneously hard-boiled and lush hard-earned and beautiful. The sacred and the profane history and other writers parenthood and Pittsburgh all of it comes under Collins' purview. These are goddamn great poems. I loved this collection.</p><p></p><p>-Ed Simon is the editor of <em>The Pittsburgh  Review of Books</em> and <em>Rust Belt Magazine</em></p><p></p><p>A guy walks into a bar.... He emerges with this beautiful and compelling book. Kristofer Collins' <em>The Vesper Room </em>is a place of moving secular prayer - lament praise gratitude blues solace stark witness mutual forgiveness and above all generous attention. Like jukebox music spilling from a doorway the collection widens to fill the street the city our whole our damaged world. These immediate engaging poems appear offhand </p><p> but they go deep. And they end ultimately in authentic earned commitment -- to family friendship beauty grit and love. In A Sixer from Graziano's Collins ponders the mystery of how he found his way into such shining company. After downing the poems in this book one feels the same. I'm not much of a drinker myself but I want to stay with him and have a few more. You will too.</p><p></p><p>-Richard St. John author of <em>Book of Entangled Souls</em></p><p></p><p>Sometimes mournful sometimes prickly Kristofer Collins finds joy in a puddle grasps rapture in an old Cher song and sees admonishment in a fancy cocktail list. <em>Vesper Room</em> is a collection full of razor-sharp sense memory communion with the dead and a deep feeling for home.</p><p></p><p>-Jody DiPerna author of the forthcoming <em>All We Have Is Each Other: Literary Appalachia</em></p>