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Billy Collins -- winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, veteran of a one-hour Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross, and a guest on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion -- arrives at Random House with the poetic equivalent of a Greatest Hits album, seasoned with some wonderful new numbers. Ranging from a lament over "Forgetfulness"--"Whatever it is you are struggling to remember/it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, /not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen"--to a love poem that starts with weighing a dog, to a definitive "Life of Riley" ("He never had a job, a family or a sore throat"), Billy Collins' poems often seem modest and homespun, until the reader finds himself suddenly dissolving into laughter or tears. As for his popularity, a recent piece in Publishers Weekly, which ran before his three-book deal with Random House was made public, will perhaps be more convincing than any editor trying to flog a book in a fact sheet could be: "In February alone, three of Collins' collections sold nearly 8000 copies ... Fresh Air/Terry Gross recently rebroadcast an hour-long interview with Collins; the following day Picnic, Lightning briefly hit #59 in Amazon.com's bestseller rankings." Billy Collins is a dynamic and popular reader. He makes between thirty and forty appearances a year. His arrival at a prominent trade publishing house will ensure an even wider audience for his poetry and will capitalize on his increasing popularity. Household name may not be too much to ask for.… (more)
User reviews
like a yawn. Too much of it
and my thoughts break apart
into line and stanza,
metaphor dribbling out,
sticky sweet.
Old envelopes and backs of shopping lists
blank canvases for scrawled verse
until I find myself in the canned soup aisle
musing on a thought inspired by April rain
and
in one evening.
Trying to describe his work, I grasp
at elegant turns of phrase, like
inspired accessibility or
mundane transcendence.
I'll have to read some more of this, I think.
But not, perhaps, right away.
1. Easy to recommend, especially to people who don’t read a lot of poetry. I plan on giving my copy to my mom. It’s easy to read, easy to follow, and easy to put down at night. No emotional bombs and no c-words (I’m looking at you, Carolyn Forche.)
2.
3. He’s a really good writer, and some of these poems are really good.
& Reasons I didn’t love this book:
1. Reasons #1 & 2 from above. I’m not one of those people with a snooty aversion to popular poets, but BC just takes accessibility and niceness to a level I find really boring. I read these poems in the middle of the night, at the point where my brain was already half asleep and I wasn’t committing myself 100% to anything but breathing, and this book felt right at my level. That says something, I think…
2. The format is really sucky. For too many of the poems, a page break comes at a point where the last line on one page feels like a good conclusion, then you turn the page and surprise! There’s another 3 stanzas to go. Distracting, and doesn’t do much for the integrity of the poems.
3. There are some really good poems in this book, MAYBE one or two great ones… but the good stuff to filler ratio seems skewed to the negative. Much of this impression comes down to personal preference, but so it goes.