Misha Collins is best known for his role on The CW’s long-running show, Supernatural, which is how I came to know who this dude is. He previously released a cookbook with his wife Vicky, and his latest offering to the book world is poetry with Some Things I Still Can’t Tell You.
Before I get to the review part, I must address something that only a few people are talking about at the time of this writing. The acknowledgements page, which is available to view in the preview on Amazon, drops a little bomb. Misha says he and Vicky are separated. It’s a bit of a shock to see something like that sneaked in to the end of the book, especially when a good portion of the poems are about her and their love.
I wish I would have known that little tidbit before interviewing him about the book, but here we are. He stumbled through talking about the book in a way that was noticeably awkward, but at the time, I just took it as having a hard time with self-promotion. “I’m going to have to figure out how to talk about it if I’m going to sell this book,” Misha said to me during our one-on-one conversation just a couple blocks away from his publisher’s offices.
Now, I see where this would be a little strange to talk about, but he agreed to the interview and the book was clearly mentioned in my list of conversation topics, so that’s not entirely my bad. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Some Things I Still Can’t Tell You is Misha telling bits and pieces of his life in what feels like micro short stories from the last 20 years.
“I have a small anthology of poems that are also quite autobiographical, and I guess it’s a little bit of a memoir in poems of my adult life,” Misha said. “I don’t know if it’s a vanity project. I just wanted to get my poems out there.”
I talked to Misha before the advanced copy of the book was available and there wasn’t much known about what he wrote about. We talked about it in the most vague ways, which I guess is part of the mystery of poetry.
“There’s not a theme to it. It’s organized according to sort of sections. There’s a section on love, and a section on my kids and my family, and a section on nature and running, and a section on, I don’t know, hard times,” Misha said with a shrug.
Now that I’ve read it, I can confirm those sections exist. He writes a lot about his wife, and one of those poems includes the line that became the title. It’s a funny little story, and I won’t spoil it for you. When I reached that line, I definitely smiled and it kind of changed the meaning of the title for me.
There are a few other lines that stand out to me, and generally those are the last lines. The poems often start with an odd story and quickly devolve into a thought-provoking final few words. It’s very Misha in that way.
I did not find it to be anything that would make you cry or smash your feelings. (Well, in the moment. The hindsight of knowing they are separated makes the love poems a little heavier.) It’s a quirky book of stories from a quirky dude who is out here achieving his goals.
“I have long wanted to publish a book of poetry and I just did it,” Misha said. “I feel pretty good about it. I like my poems.”
Literary HypeWoman 