Books to Remember is an annual list of 25 titles chosen for their ability to provide an informative or transformative reading experience for adults. Selection criteria include literary excellence, uniqueness of concept, and command of subject matter.

From the Books to Remember ceremony:

"Why should someone lift the 5-year-old to enable the viewing of mob violence? Was it a lesson for the boy who, later, raised his own daughter to say, "May I help you please?" but who also, for a period in his life, made noise in the streets under the cover of white sheets? What is her father's part? What is anyone's part?

You might call Blue Front a poetic investigation. Within its pages, Collins pieces together an account of how we piece together accounts.

Purposefully fragmented with a collage of evidence such as portraits, postcards, and newspaper editorials, this book-length poem does not hang for display a single frame of view, one history, North or South, black or white, justice or violence. Collins brilliantly leads us to gaze, as if into broken shards of glass in which truths are refracted, and ask, "How do individuals shape history, and how do events in history relate to me personally?"

The resulting poem remains in contact with the energy that animates history, and it resonates on each page. Like any moment in time, no single perspective could trap it. The feat of the writing is that we receive the facts, but we also perceive the omissions.

The poem undertakes a significant topic. but that's not its only virtue. Blue Front moves me because it's a rare and beautiful treasure." --Lisa Piraino