Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems

The first poem I read of Billy Collins' was "Forgetfulness". I am glad it is in this collection because it so well epitomizes the everyday nature of his poems, the way he speaks to us as if we were just visiting and he is describing some incident in his life, or expounding on something that matters to him. I could see him in the student lounge, in the leather chair next to the Rodin, at our local Dry Dock Brewery or at a coffee shop. He would be the one we would all gather around. I am the one, however, who posted that his reading style doesn't do justice to his writing. In retrospect, maybe his low key reading is nuanced to go with his poems. Now, that I have been trying to write poems, when I read his poems, I find myself wanting to mimic his writing style. One of the things I notice is that he doesn't hurry things, he doesn't summarize. I feel rushed in my writing, like I'm giving an acceptance speech at the Oscars and someone is standing off camera signaling me to wrap it up. Billy, though, for example, in "Fishing on the Susquehanna in July" takes 13 stanzas to describe how the closest he ever came to fishing on the Susquehanna was seeing a painting in a museum, in Philadelphia, of someone in a little boat fishing on the Susquehanna. These extra lines, though, give the poem its depth and reality and the well drawn images then stay with you. Billy Collins then goes deeper and adds themes to his basic subject matter. If Norman Rockwell had painted like Billy writes the pictures would not only have been warm slices of Americana, they would have contained poignant bits of reality such as maybe a woman looking bored at Thanksgiving Dinner or quarreling with whomever was seated by her. I like how he shares with us as if we were his close friends. For example, in "The Three Wishes" he goes through the first several stanzas showing how the foolish man and wife wasted the wishes they were granted. The man, hungry from work, wishes for sausages which angers his wife who then wishes the pan to stick to his nose. Collins discusses the moral of the story, the foolishness of the couple and what they could have had. Then, he ends, in an almost covert whisper by telling us that this story always makes him hungry for sausages. And of course he makes it all look so easy. Another favorite of mine is "Dharma" about his dog who "If only she did not shove the cat aside/every morning/and eat all his food/what a model of self-containment she would be". His use of line breaks and enjambment set the pace and place emphasis where he wants it. His techniques are subtle such as his use of consonance in this poem with brown coat, blue collar, steady breathing. He uses assonance too in this poem, earthly, eager, ears. It's neat that he became Poet Laureate, that he was recognized for what he offers. This collection of his is a great book, for yourself or as a gift for a dear friend.

The US Library of Congress has had 'Poet Laureate Consultants' since 1986, supplanting the older position of 'Consultant' which had existed since 1937, a New Deal legacy. Quite a few of America's finest poets have been thus honored -- Robert Lowell, William Carlos Williams, Randall Jarrell, Robert Frost -- though several equally great have been neglected and, as one might expect, a number of Laureates might be generously described as "inoffensive."Billy Collins was America's Poet Laureate in 2001-2003. His first book, The Apple That Astonished Paris, was published in 1988. It's taken twenty years for the Poet and this humble reader to find each other! Since I'm not the least literate kid in the class, that says an unfortunate mouthful about the state of poetry in the United States.It's fair to say, I think, that Collins is a deliberately 'minor' poet, who works hard NOT to transcend that modest stature. He preserves a Quakerly plainness of language and a Shakeresque simplicity of form. He takes few risks. He eschews profound and painful epiphanies like a child avoids brussel sprouts. He's enormously popular, for a poet, and well-rewarded in book sales. All that said, to my surprise, I find I like his work a lot! He may be minor, but he's in my minor key. His daily walks in the garden sound a lot like mine."Sailing Alone Around the Room" is a slim volume of small poems - none of Collins's poems are large - selected from his earlier four books together with twenty new poems as of 2002. It's not such a good idea to try to read Collins intensively, poem after poem. His limitations are exposed that way, and the quirky pleasure of his accessibility fades. But if you read a couple at a time, savoring their honest neighborliness, you'll discover that you LIKE Billy Collins's poetry even though you can't particularly remember any lines of it.Here's a typical Collins poem:WALKING ACROSS THE ATLANTICI wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beachbefore stepping on to the first wave.Soon I am walking across the Atlanticthinking about Spain,checking for whales, waterspouts.I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.But for now I try to imagine whatthis must look like to the fish below,the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.Okay, okay, it's almost disappearingly simple, though a grad student could easily make a metaphysical imagism out of it. It's not a poem of the sublimity of Whitman's "Live Oak in Louisiana" or "Noiseless Patient Spider." It's closer, really, to the poetry of the Chinese seers for which Collins expresses admiration. It is a pebble dropped in a quiet pond for the pleasure of watching the ripples, or the fleeting tweet of a song sparrow heard while sweeping the patio in your own back yard.

This is the US edition of "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes" but confusingly at times the contents are in slightly different order, and this edition has a dozen new poems the UK edition doesn't have.You'd read Billy Collins for his at times quite unexpected imagery, not his language. Really it helps to think of these as prose poems, arbitrarily cut into lines -- I find them a bit unsatisfying, like poetry in translation.

About a hundred poems from a popular US master ,representative of his wry style,in familiar short stanzas,quatrains selected from four anthologies from the last decade of the 20the Century.A good introduction to this Post Laureate,it includes his wry observation on poetry critiques ',Intoduction to Poetry'.,which will ring bells to those like me,who were forced to study poetry purely with a view to passing exams.The only downside being the usual problem with modern poetry books,the lack of notes to aid the readers understanding of what are often eclectic themes.

Get this book if you want to laugh, cry, dream and try to make sense of the world through the eyes and words of a genius.I keep this near me at all times...just lying around on the table, sofa, bedroom...i pick it up and randomly read...my old favourites and new pieces in equal measure.It's worth it for 'another reason i don't keep a gun in the house' alone.

Wonderful words and structure, giving a new view of both the mundane and the special. I love Billy Collins. This anthology offers a great selection of his work.

Billy Collins is a late 20th/early 21st century Robert Frost. His poems convey with quirky brilliance a sense of the New England landscape in which he lives. He tells wry little anecdotes about himself and his day. The mix of wisdom, humour and pitch-perfect choice of vocabulary, and the varied discipline of his verse form, make a poem from this collection the perfect way to begin and end each day.