Product Description

Over the past decade, Billy Collins has emerged as the most beloved American poet since Robert Frost, garnering critical acclaim and broad popular appeal. To celebrate his years as U.S. Poet Laureate, we are pleased to announce these special, limited editions, in hardcover, of the book that helped establish and secure his reputation during the 1990s. Collin's poetry has been described by Gerald Stern as "heartbreakingly beautiful." Annie Proulx admits, "I have never before felt possessive about a poet, but I am fiercely glad that Billy Collins is ours." John Updike proclaims of these poems: "consistently starling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the world that are and were and some others besides." Everyone has a favorite Collins poem, whether it is his resigned meditation on "Forgetfulness" (Questions About Angels, 1991), his affectinate riff on his mechanic's calendars in "Pinup" (The Art of Drowning, 1995), his delight in "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes" (Picnic, Lightning, 1998), or any number of others about his dog; listening to jazz, or wondering whether the "Three Blind Mice" suffer from a congenital condition or were all caught in a fireworks explosion. The Washington Post declares Collins to be in possession of "one of the richest imagination around." Whether reading him for the first time or the fiftieth time, these books are must-haves for anyone interested in the poet the New York Times calls simply "the real thing."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #186544 in Books
• Published on: 1995-06-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 112 pages

Review
The Art Of Drowning
The Best Cigarette
The Biography Of A Cloud
The Blues
Budapest
Canada
Center
Cheers
The City Of Tomorrow
Consolation
Conversion
Dancing Toward Bethlehem
Days
Dear Reader
Death Beds
Design
Directions
Dream
Driving Myself To A Poetry Reading
The End Of The World
Exploring The Coast Of Birdland
Fiftieth Birthday Eve
The First Dream
Horizon
Influence
The Invention Of The Saxophone
Keat's Handwriting
Man In Space
Medium
Metropolis
Monday Morning
My Heart
Nightclub
On Turning Ten
Osso Buco
Philosophy
Piano Lessons
Pinup
Print
Reading In A Hammock
Romanticism
Shadow
Some Final Words
Sunday Morning With The Sensational Nightingales
Sweet Talk
Thesaurus
Tuesday, June 4, 1991
Water Table
While Eating A Pear
Workshop
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Review
"A wonderful, thoughtful, sly, and moving collection."  --San Francisco Chronicle

"A brilliant collection." --Washington Post

From the Publisher
Over the past decade, Billy Collins has emerged as the most beloved American poet since Robert Frost, garnering critical acclaim and broad popular appeal. To celebrate his years as U.S. Poet Laureate, The University of Pittsburgh Press is pleased to announce these special limited editions, in hardcover, of the books that helped establish and secure his reputation during the 1990s. (See also Picnic, Lightning, ISBN 0822940663; and Questions About Angels, ISBN 0822942119.)

Customer Reviews

The Art of Drowning
My review is for those who aren't big poetry buffs. For those of us who think poetry could very well be a dead art or something only intellectuals would enjoy. A friend started sending me poems by Billy Collins and I enjoyed them so much I bought The Art of Drowning. His writing is so accessible to our modern sensibilities and resonate with our day to day lives. Check out "Days". The words he chose and rhythms he created really drew me in. Hope you enjoy all the poems in this book as much as I did.

Nothing is measly.
Reading Collins has given me a greater appreciation for the potential of free verse. He has affected my own writing in what I am currently interpreting as a positive way...
I've forgotten how to rhyme / But that's O.K. / Perhaps was tyme!
These poems evoke recognition in the reader. For the most part, we can participate in them. They deal with simple things we can identify with. Like saxophones, dreams, clouds, writing as a craft, the Blues, a really good cigarette... and meat.
And speaking of meat, I have christened Osso Buco as my favorite Collins poem to date. I think of it as a little hymn to domestic contentment, which is "something you don't hear much about in poetry." But there is a wonderful undertone running through this poem... that the great things in history did not necessarily take place in the atmosphere of satiated bliss here described, and at first glance, seemingly lauded.
This is what I love so much about his stuff. The intelligent playfulness, the game involving what is said, and what is meant. What we see on the page is like the one-sixth of the iceberg above water... there is so much beneath, in and around the words.
There is always something more to think about when you come to the last line of a Collins poem.

There is nothing trite about this collection. I've taken about a month to read through these fifty poems, because each is like a meal in itself. The book is not a party-platter of bite-size hors d'oeuvres. Nothing is measly. And Osso Buco is a feast.
You owe it to yourself to eat... I mean read, The Art Of Drowning.
T. y. L. i. I.

Sarcastic, Poignant and Occasionally Comical
"In a while, one of us will go up to bed
and the other one will follow.
Then we will slip below the surface of the night
into miles of water, drifting down and down
to the dark, soundless bottom
until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,
below the shale and layered rock"
~Osso Buco

Firstly, I want to say that I love the Pittsburgh Poetry Series. Each book is about 100 pages and you can read one book right before going to bed. Poetry seems to calm my mind and encourages more vivid dreams.

"The Art of Drowning" is an interesting collection. It is not as "cartoon" focused as "Questions about Angels." Although, there is some silliness to be had in "Nightclub" where we are amused by songs no one would sing. It was funnier when my husband read it to me. I'm not sure why. He and I were reading in bed and I asked him to read me some poems. He liked "The Biography of a Cloud," especially the lines: "but early one morning over Arizona it held the distinction of being the only one in the sky." He loves going to Arizona, so he could easily imagine the lonely cloud drifting across an open sky.

You hardly imagine that reading poetry in bed would be anything less than romantic, yet with many of Billy Collins' poems, this is exactly what happens. Apparently I'm not the only one who was highly amused by "Nightclub." My husband was just calmly reading and I was lost in laughter as if there were some private joke only I was acknowledging.

Many of the poems seem quite intimate, like cozy conversations with the reader. There is an inner vision and motion. At times Billy Collins peers into frankness as it looks back starkly and at other times his matter-of-fact observations show irony. Then, suddenly we are drowned in nostalgia, awakened by dread or simply wondering at the sheer imagination it takes to write the last few lines of "Tuesday."

You have to love the "book recommendations" in "Canada," or the story of trees reciting poems in "Fiftieth Birthday Eve." Collins turns poetry into magic. These are not just words dancing before your eyes, they are living creatures jumping off the page into our imagination. His choice of words is like the choice of colors for a painting, yet the painting is occurring in minds. The better your imagination, the better the poem. You must submit the canvas for the artwork. You can remain closed, only seeing the words, or let the words into your mind and allow them to paint vivid images, recollection, connect with past memories or propel you into thinking about the future.

The title of this book refers to a poem called: The Art of Drowning and it deals with the concept of your life flashing before your eyes. Here, Billy Collins takes a rather irreverent look at what happens when you die and why your life might not necessarily "flash" but might take other forms.

Billy Collins' poems amaze me, not only because he can adjust his focus in a variety of amusing and out-of-the-box ways. He amazes due to his ability to make each poem an emotion or a moment in time, representative of his present condition. There are moments of longing, the dreams of travel and other places he'd rather be. There is also a comfort in the present and common life or solitude when observing nature.

Many poems (in general) make me feel that I am on the outside looking in. Billy Collins' poems make me feel that I am on the inside, looking out as Billy Collins observes his world.

He does at times seem to be an observer as words break on the page. There are undercurrents of emotions surging inside him and occasionally they break on the page as sarcasm, irony or a sheer appreciation for being. In "Conversion" he takes us into the past while in "Death Beds" he takes us into the future. Here we think about where we will be when we die. Not something I think about daily, but an interesting concept.

"I would hope for a window,
the usual frame of reference,
a clear sky, or think high clouds,
an abundance of sun, a cool pillow."

"Medium" is stunning because it explains how Collins would love to write on more surfaces than paper and I'm sure he realized that each time he writes a poem, he is writing on our hearts or across our minds and many of his poems are unforgettable and seep into your soul. Some of the poems will even drown you in laughter.

~The Rebecca Review