Review for A New American Field Guide & Song Book

The first paragraph of the Liner Notes for A New American Field Guide & Song Book sports a hefty list of all those that poet and writer Ryan Collins owes a debt of gratitude to, from William Melvin Hicks to Titus Andronicus. It’s an impressive cross section of everything that goes into the great American melting pot of culture by one means or another. Collins needs to thank the many because he has used the few pages of this book to stir that melting pot into a caldron of changed-up images and mixed-up meanings. He did his best to redefine the new in “New American.”

My personal favorite snapshot of a routine American mindset: “We set ourselves into a world like precious gems, when we are more cubic zirconia, oriental emeralds, New American rubies.”

Collins often berates, but also cautions and cajoles us with sage advice: “Your body is your best protest & your words are not ash until you burn them—”

Ryan Collins uses A New American Field Guide & Song Book to give us a survival guide to the crazy mash-up of our modern lives. He presents us wonderers with directions, while he admonishes us with: “You are only lost if you don’t follow the maps I sent, if you refuse to unfold the crane’s paper wings.”

To Collins’ Liner Notes list I would like to add a credit line for the lyrics of “Upside Down.” That tune started playing in my head while I was reading and it wouldn’t go away.  I couldn’t remember the words exactly, but “Upside down. You turn me. Inside out and round about,” were close enough. At the time, I didn’t think of them as a corruption of memory, just an extra clue to help me find my way.