Questions About Angels : Poems

by Billy Collins

Paperback, 1999

Status

Available

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Publication

Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.

Description

Billy Collins has emerged as the most beloved American poet since Robert Frost, garnering critical acclaim and broad popular appeal. Annie Proulx admits, "I have never before felt possessive about a poet, but I am fiercely glad that Billy Collins is ours." This special, limited edition celebrates Billy Collins's years as U.S. Poet Laureate. Questions About Angels--one of the books that helped establish and secure his reputation and popularity during the 1990s--is remarkable for its wry, inquisitive voice and its sheer imaginative range. Edward Hirsch selected this classic book for the National Poetry Series, and each of Collins's poems-from his meditation on forgetfulness to his musings on the behavior of angels-is an exploration of imaginative possibilities. Whether reading him for the first time or the fiftieth, this collector's edition is a must-have for anyone interested in the poet the New York Times calls simply "the real thing."… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member -Cee-
Billy Collins is one of my favorite poets. This collection is varied... thoughtful, whimsical, sad, and fun.

A lot of his poetry is easy to read and relate to...
How many will recognize this feeling somewhere between waking and sleeping?
exerpt from "Reading Myself to Sleep":

"Is there a more gentle
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way o go into the night
than to follow an endless rope of sentences
and then to slip drowsily under the surface of a page

into the first tenative flicker of a dream,
passing out of the bright precincts of attention
like cigarette smoke passing through a window screen?

All late readers know this sinking feeling of falling
into the liquid of sleep and then rising again
to the call of a voice that you are holding in your hands

as if pulled from the sea back into a boat...."

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