Product Description

A Billy Collins poem is instantly recognizable. “Using simple, understandable language,” notes USA Today, the two-term U.S. Poet Laureate “captures ordinary life–its pleasure, its discontents, its moments of sadness and of joy.” His everyman approach to writing resonates with readers everywhere and generates fans who would otherwise never give a poem a second glance.

Now, in this stunning new collection, Collins touches on a greater array of subjects–love, death, solitude, youth, and aging–delving deeper than ever before. Ballistics comes at the reader full force with moving and playful takes on life. Drawing inspiration from the world around him and from such poetic forebears as Robert Frost, Paul Valéry, and eleventh-century poet Liu Yung, Collins drolly captures the essence of an ordinary afternoon:

All I do these drawn-out days
is sit in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge
where there are no pheasants to be seen
and, last time I looked, no ridge.

Collins reflects on his solitude:

If I lived across the street from myself
and I was sitting in the dark
on the edge of the bed
at five o’clock in the morning,

I might be wondering what the light
was doing on in my study at this hour.

And he meditates on the effects of love:

It turns everything into a symbol
like a storm that breaks loose
in the final chapter of a long novel.

And it may add sparkle to a morning,
or deepen a night
when the bed is ringed with fire.

As Collins strives to find truth in the smallest detail, readers are given a fascinating, intimate glimpse into the heart and soul of a brilliantly thoughtful man and exemplary poet.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4289 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-09
• Released on: 2008-09-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 128 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The latest from former U.S. laureate Collins (The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems) again shows the deft, often self-mocking touch that has made him one of America's bestselling poets: while this volume hardly breaks new ground, it should fly off the shelves. To his jokes about, and against, his own poetizing, Collins now adds two new emphases: on life in France, where (to judge by the poems) he has spent some time and (more pervasively) a preoccupation with the end of life. Collins is never carefree, but he is, as always, accessible and high-spirited, making light even when telling himself that nothing lasts: Vermont, Early November finds the poet in his kitchen, wringing his signature charm from the eternal carpe diem theme, determined to seize firmly/ the second Wednesday of every month. For Collins, such are his stock in trade, humorous and serious at once. His tongue-in-cheek assault on the gloom and doubt in our poetry is his only remedy for the loneliness that (even for him) shadows all poems: this is a poem, not a novel, he laments, and the only characters here are you and I,/ alone in an imaginary room/ which will disappear after a few more lines. (Sept.)
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Review
“Collins reveals the unexpected within the ordinary. He peels back the surface of the humdrum to make the moment new.”
–The Christian Science Monitor

“Billy Collins demonstrates why he is one of our best poets, with his appealing trademark style: a self-deprecating charm, playful wit and unexpected imaginative leaps.”
–San Antonio Express-News

“By careful observation, Collins spins comic gold from the dross of quotidian suburban life. . . . Chipping away at the surface, he surprises you by scraping to the wood underneath, to some deeper truth.”
–Entertainment Weekly

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

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

“Clever, subtle and engaging.”
–Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

About the Author
Billy Collins is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Trouble with Poetry, Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. He is also the editor of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. A distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York, he was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and Poet Laureate of New York State from 2004 to 2006.

Customer Reviews

Pithy and serene.
I've just recently read Ballistics and prior to this I have read all of Collins's other collections of poems, over the years. So I have really followed him, thanks to a friend introducing me to his work. And not only have I followed him, but he has very much influenced the way I myself write poetry.
I would say that the ease with which Collins handles commonplace events and the gentle way he looks in, around, and over any topic at his disposal, it has all helped me to see the beauty and wonder that are a part of everyday experience. And because of this, he has inspired me to do my own writing.
Some commentators are saying that he has "hit a dead end" with Ballistics. Or, "The very things that make him popular, accessible and clever -- especially around the time of `Picnic, Lightning' -- have solidified into concrete, and like a machine endlessly repeating itself he turns out poems with subtle color variations but which remain in the same mold." [Sean Patrick Hill in The Oregonian].
I will agree that Ballistics seems to me "typical" Collins stuff. But, having said that, it is still such rich and wonderful work.
Why fix what ain't broke?
And I think that with Billy Collins a key word is "accessible." Were I to be introducing someone to the world of contemporary poetry, it would be Billy Collins I was gift-wrapping.
And what about serenity.
For this, just listen to the endings, the last stanzas of so many of his poems here in Ballistics. The way he describes what The Great American Poem might "sound" like:

I once heard someone compare it
to the sound of crickets in a field of wheat
or, more faintly, just the wind
over that field stirring things that we will never see.

From The Lamps Unlit -

And who cares if it takes me all day
to write a poem about the dawn
and I finish in the dark with the night -
some love it best - draped across my shoulders.

Or this, from one of my own favorites, Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant -

And I should mention the light
which falls through the big windows this time of day
italicizing everything it touches -
the plates and teapots, the immaculate tablecloths,
as well as the soft brown hair of the waitress
in the white blouse and short black skirt,
the one who is smiling now as she bears a cup of rice
and shredded beef with garlic to my favorite table in the corner.

Billy Collins is the epitome [in our day] of the magnification of words.
He takes the everyday and presents it as once in a lifetime.
The above-mentioned critic went on to point out that it is unfortunate that with Ballistics, Collins has failed to "expand, explore, and attempt to break new ground."
Others of us can be somewhat grateful.

"The class clown in the schoolhouse of American Poetry." *
In an interview in June 2006 for "Guernica Magazine" *, Billy Collins talked about his conscious decision to move from being a serious and difficult to understand poet to one who wrote clear, accessible poems, "I think I kind of bought into the assumption that poetry had to be extremely gloomy and incomprehensible, or nearly so. And when I wrote I took on the role of the despondent and difficult to understand person. Whereas in life, I was easy to understand, to the point of being simple-minded maybe.

The change came I would say when I began to dare to be clear, because I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You're out in the open field. You're actually saying things that are comprehensible, and it's easy to criticize something you understand."

OK...I confess: I like his poetry because it is so understandable. A professor of English I once had looked down on poets who were easy to understand and dismissed them as being either lazy or lacking in talent or intellectual light-weights or all three. He'd sometimes say things about a poem written by a poet he didn't particularly care for as being "mellifluous and written with pastels." I'm sure, if he's still teaching, he's saying that to "unsophisticated" undergrads (just like I was back then) about the poetry of Billy Collins. Fortunately, I've grown up and am still unsophisticated enough to enjoy poetry that I can understand and even chuckle at knowing the poet is saying something funny on purpose. Such is the poetry of Billy Collins, for me at least.

I do own most of his poetry books and enjoy many of his poems. The reason I gave BALLISTICS only 4 stars instead of 5 is because I don't think the poems contained within are as good as those in previous books. I do like "Addendum" (p.70), especially the first stanza: "What I forgot to tell you in that last poem/ if you were paying attention at all/ was that I really did love her at the time." It gets my attention right off and then the poem goes on to a remembrance of a love long since over, but still pleasant to recall. On the other side of the poetic coin is a very short poem called "Divorce" (p.98) that is only 18 words (4 lines) total and seems silly to me: "Once, two spoons in bed,/ now tined forks/ across a granite table/ and the knives they have hired." It's got the feeling of something dashed off while sipping coffee at the breakfast table. Here, I think, the poet tries too hard to be cute.

My favorite book of Collins' poems is THE ART OF DROWNING. I like the poem "Philosophy" (pp.69-70) in particular. "I used to sit in the cafe of existentialism,/ lost in a blue cloud of cigarette smoke,/ contemplating the suicide a tiny Frenchman/ might commit by leaping from the rim of my brandy glass." He goes on to write about other philosophers and schools of philosophical thought with tongue firmly imbedded in cheek. There are poems in that volume dealing with such earthbound topics as jazz, food, cigarettes, poetry workshops, reading in a hammock...and every one is comprehensible.

My opinions aside, I do recommend BALLISTICS to Billy Collins fans and to anyone who mistakenly thinks poetry is supposed to be stuffy and just for eggheads or pompous college profs. To those sophisticates out there, I say, open this small 110 page volume of verse and enjoy!

Review of BALLISTICS by Billy Collins
Each of Billy Collins's new books outdoes its predecessor. It's refreshing
to read and understand contemporary poetry in these days of poets attempting to show us how intelligent they are at the expense of their humanity. There is never any of that with Collins's work. Straightforward poems with fresh metaphor and simile are his trademark. After reading any of his collections I am always looking forward to more. One can become addicted to his wit and irony.

Richard Brown