MERCY WEARS A RED DRESS

The work of a wonderful secular poet, Billy Collins, provides a great model for Christian writers. His Coleridge "conversation poems" allow for real play and comedy, all in the service of profundity. These are veins that have not been suitably mined by poets who have access to the larger humanity that only Jesus can provide. But there's more than comedy in this collection. The Sorrows of Mary offer a sober truth, as do the four Gospel sonnets; both sections provide a bracing interlude before we get back to high-spirited comedy in the St. Anthony poems--where the sainted speaker disdains direction and instead carries on about whatever is on his mind at the moment. In all, Mercy Wears a Red Dress offers a slice of the abundant life, a knowledge echoed in a Protestant hymn: "I read the back of the book and we win."