Product Description

Playfulness, spare elegance, and wit epitomize the poetry of Billy Collins. With his distinct voice and accessible language, America’s two-term Poet Laureate has opened the door to poetry for countless people for whom it might otherwise remain closed.

Like the present book’s title, Collins’s poems are filled with mischief, humor, and irony, “Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, but here I would like to address / only those in my own time zone”–but also with quiet observation, intense wonder, and a reverence for the everyday: “The birds are in their trees, / the toast is in the toaster, / and the poets are at their windows. / They are at their windows in every section of the tangerine of earth–the Chinese poets looking up at the moon, / the American poets gazing out / at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.”

Through simple language, Collins shows that good poetry doesn’t have to be obscure or incomprehensible, qualities that are perhaps the real trouble with most “serious” poetry: “By now, it should go without saying / that what the oven is to the baker / and the berry-stained blouse to the drycleaner / so the window is to the poet.”

In this dazzling new collection, his first in three years, Collins explores boyhood, jazz, love, the passage of time, and, of course, writing–themes familiar to Collins’s fans but made new here. Gorgeous, funny, and deeply empathetic, Billy Collins’s poetry is a window through which we see our lives as if for the first time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #234524 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-18
• Released on: 2005-10-18
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 112 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Two years after his very visible stint as U.S. poet laureate, Collins (Sailing Alone Around the Room) remains one of the nation's most popular poets. His light touch, his self-deprecating pathos and his unerring sense of his audience (nothing too difficult, but nothing too lowbrow) explain much of that popularity and remain evident in this eighth collection. "The birds are in their trees,/ the toast is in the toaster,/ and the poets are at their windows," the volume begins: the poet as sensitive everyman, moved if not baffled by literary legacies, and attracted to simple pleasures, constructs a series of similar days and scenes. "In the Moment" depicts "a day in June," "the kind that gives you no choice/ but to unbutton your shirt/ and sit outside in a rough wooden chair"; "I Ask You" opens on "an ordinary night at the kitchen table." Collins's comic gifts are also much in evidence: "Special Glasses" describes spectacles that "filter out the harmful sight of you"; "The Introduction" makes fun of footnotes and obscurities in other poets' poems. The dominant note, however, is a gentle sadness, accomplished with care and skill, sometimes (as in "The Lanyard") garnished by autobiographical wisdom. (Oct.)
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From Booklist
Collins is one of the most popular and most disarming of poets. He draws you close with his swinging lines, twirling metaphors, homey imagery, and coy self-deprecation. But he is as likely to be hiding a cudgel behind his back as a bouquet of flowers. How fitting it is that in "Theme," a suavely disconsolate poem, he tips his hat to Cole Porter and the great composer's "put-on nonchalance." Porter's wry and clever style is Collins' style, too, and he uses it with mastery and purpose in easily consumed and devastatingly funny poems in which he shares his discernment of the wonder and torment of life, the terror and banality of death. In meditative poems blissfully free of labored allusions, Collins detects the metaphysical dimension of a hot shower or a glass of iced tea, even as he writes candidly about how difficult it is to control the unruly mind. Skeptical of love and scornful of pretension, Collins is breathtaking in his appreciation of the earth's beauty and the precious daily routines that define life. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Praise for Billy Collins

“Using simple, understandable language, Collins captures ordinary life–its pleasure, its discontents, its moments of sadness and of joy.”
–USA Today

“At once accessible and profound, [Collins’s] work makes him a natural people’s poet.”
–Boston Herald

“A poet of plenitude, irony, and Augustan grace.”
–The New Yorker

“A sort of poet not seen since Robert Frost.”
–The Boston Globe


“Collins reveals the unexpected within the ordinary. He peels back the surface of the humdrum to make the moment new.”
–The Christian Science Monitor

“It is difficult not to be charmed by Collins, and that in itself is a remarkable literary accomplishment.”
–The New York Review of Books

Customer Reviews

Collins Makes Poetry Fun
Billy Collins has such a quirky sense of humor and he's a master of rhythm. I teach creative writing and, whenever a student thinks they don't like poetry, I pull out this collection and share a poem or two. Collins makes poetry accessible and enjoyable without dumbing it down. Yippee!

There's No Trouble With THIS Poetry
No trouble at all. Billy Collins is one of the most accesible modern american poets. He makes poetry seem easy to do, so much so, that I bet most of his readers feel encouraged to try. I've bought many of his other books, (The Art of Drowning, Questions About Angels, Picnic, Lightning, Sailing Around The Room) and I always feel like I'm inviting an old friend over. His imagery is taken from the everyday life, that's why we feel so close to his writings. He is an American Poet Laureate, that doesn't take himself too seriously, another clue as to why he's so popular. I encourage everybody to read his work aloud, among friends, sharing a bottle of Merlot.

José A. Peláez, artist, writer.

Few Troubles Here
I am a great admirer of Mr. Collins. His ability to write very personal poems that still manage to draw in the reader and be accessible is amazing. Plus, he has the great ability to use simple language to create powerful images. He uses this ability right at the opening of this volume in the wonderful lead poem, "You, Reader.": "I wonder how you are going to feel/when you find out/that I wrote this poem instead of you,//that it was I who got up early/to sit in the kitchen/and mention with a pen//the rain soaked windows,..."

There are a number of excellent verses in this book. Among the best are "Traveling Alone," "I Ask You," "Breathless," "The Introduction," and the title poem, "The Trouble with Poetry." But my favorite one in this collection is "The Lanyard." In this one, the poet comes across the word "lanyard" while browsing in the dictionary and this takes him back to when he made a lanyard for his mother at summer camp. This takes him to the heart of the poem, where the poet considers a boy's unequal relationship with his mother-- "She gave me life and milk from her breasts,/and I gave her a lanyard." He goes on in this incisive vein for awhile before finishing with an adult's understanding of a boy's foolishness. Not "that you can never repay your mother" but that, as a boy, he was sure the lanyard "would be enough to make us even." This is an insightful, moving poem.

Of course, when you deal with simple language and images, as Collins does, when you miss, you miss hard. There are plenty of poems in this book that don't do much for me but Collins remains consistent in his style which makes them easy enough to get through. I have yet to read a volume of poetry that hits the mark 100% of the time. Still, Collins hits the mark often enough to make me wait impatiently for each new collection.