This one was a surprise.

I only checked it out because I was looking for a new voice to talk me into sleep. Actually, I thought Misha Collins might have voiced some Supernatural tie-ins or children's books. I even checked the free sample first, because I was expecting a vanity project targeting his fanbase.

This is definitely not a vanity project. The quality of the poetry is great - and I've read and written a lot about modern English* poetry. I could do a deep dive here, but it would be really deep and probably more than you would like to read. (If you are into doing scholarly text analysis for fun: contact me. I like to play with others.)

The topics go from personal to descriptions of nature and are organized by theme. Also, I really recommend the audio book, because (obviously) this author is professionally trained to work with his voice.

The topics go from very personal to nature and are organized by theme. Influence wise (I'm only guessing here, but you might want to know if this book is of interest to you), I think I see some echoes of Roethke, Frost, Kizer. This is not poetry on their level, but it is solid, well-written and accomplished modern poetry which also stays accessible to casual readers.

Of course I have googled since and it turned out that Misha Collins has several poems published in the Columbia Poetry Review.

• This refers to the language, not the nationality of the writer.