Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems

If a poet's service to others is to wipe off our eyes and then join us as we admire the way the smears distort our pet illusions and how the truth still shines through, then Mr Collins has succeeded masterfully. These might be your words when the mind is quiet enough to be allowed to bump along the ceiling like a lost helium balloon, no direction and no fear of seeing the simple, glorious dance all around us. A delightful tickle and cold water on the inside of your face.

My only poetic exposure since Shakespeare in high school has been biblical Old Testament books such as Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastics (which I enjoy tremendously). Recently, on a whim, I read this Billy Collins book and was glad I did. It somehow connected with me in ways that were humorous, touching, or haunting, or some combination of these, while being quiet and meditative in tone. It was an atmospheric trip into a strange land where you could feel your right brain getting a good workout. No need to understand everything, just enjoy the flowers or turns-of-phrase along the way. It was spending quality time with someone gifted enough to be the Poet Laureate of the United States for 2001-2003. A Collins' poem starts from a known place, time, or activity, and then shifts gears and goes into another dimension. It begins with hearing barking dogs, shoveling snow, writing a poem, or having insomnia and ends-up in a real place with a fantastic twist (like a dog playing in an orchestra). It can also end-up in a fantastic place with a real activity (like a fanciful drive through your entire life on a bicycle in Scotland). The idea seems to be to enjoy the journey without dissecting everything along the way. There was a certain freedom for me to leave the analytical tendencies behind for a change, since I don't often get a chance to do that. It felt good to let the intuitive side of me stretch a little. As you can tell, it is hard to pin down what one likes about poetry, but maybe this kind of poetry is just about letting go for a while without thinking about the destination. At least, for me it was, and I enjoyed being able to do that.

You may find yourself reading critically acclaimed poetry in "The New York Review of Books" and other highbrow literary journals, only to think, "This stuff is horrible!" So you pick up your dog-eared copy of Keats, Shelley, or Byron, and read those more familiar odes of yesteryear, lamenting that today's poets are too alien to enjoy. It's not that you're not intelligent or avant-garde enough; it's just that the poetry of today really is bizarre. For you, reader, I recommend Billy Collins. He is critically acclaimed indeed--the Library of Congress' U.S. Poet Laureate, in fact--but he is also approachably good. Like Garrison Keillor, Mr. Collins understands the value of writing funny, and his dry, New York wit punctuates each verse like a breath of fresh air. When I first heard him read his poetry on NPR, I realized that there really is good poetry being written out there in America. Collins is the real thing, and it's writers like him that are bringing poetry back to popularity. I truly admire his work, and you will too.

I'm one of those readers who finds most poetry to be maddenly opaque, filled with mostly ambiguous and meaningless words. Dante's Inferno is a masterpiece, but he gave us something to sink our teeth into. Some of Robert Frost's poems are wonderful. But most poetry leaves me frustrated and unfulfilled. I don't blame the poets or the poems--they just don't do it for me. Give me some good, meaty prose, something with a real plot and strong sinewy words to chew on, and I'm a happy reader.Then someone suggested I give Billy Collins a try, so I invested $20+ on his recent collection entitled "Sailing Around the Room." (mostly poems from his prior collections, but with twenty or so new ones). What can I say? In the two days since I bought this volume, I've read each of the poems several times. Collins is humorous, insightful, and even his ambiguities are delicious. But beneath the humor lies some deep insights into humanity, a sense of sadness amid our passage through life (the last lines in "November" are heartbreaking). Many of his poems are wry commentaries on the creative process. If you've ever owned a dog, his "Dharma" is a revelation, you'll gain a new appreciation for snow from reading "Snow" or "Snow Day," you'll never look at someone listening to a disc player the same way after you've read "Man Listening to Disc," and you'll never pick up a Victoria's Secret catalog again without examining it through the humorous eyes of "Victoria's Secret." I loved this volume and I'll read it over and over. It's everything I have described above, but above all things, it's wise. Collins has enough of life under his belt to understand its humor, its tragedy, its joy, and its rhythms. And he has the voice to make it all real for the reader.Even if you hate poetry, buy this book.

If you haven't bought a book of poetry in a while (or, perhaps, ever), Billy Collins's most recent collection is a good choice. His poems are unfailingly accessible and entertaining, so easy to read they make poetry look as if it's easy to write. Collins abhors lofty, incomprehensible verse and yet manages to reconcile his down home persona with an obvious love of good wine, good jazz, and reference books of varying sizes. I'm off now to the park with my dog, my coffee, and my copy of Billy Collins.