The Art Of Drowning

Billy Collins's original voice is delightfully accessible, often blending comedy and solemnity in one poem, and always with something new to say. The playful tone of these poems can be misleading; whether he is writing about eating a good plate of Osso Bucco or his favorite museum rooms, there is always a pathos lingering in the silence after the last line. Most relieving is the absence of pretentiousness or haughty language. This is simply, as Robert Bly writes in his introduction to the best American poems of 1999, Collins's skillful ability to "bring the soul up close to the thing" in every poem. Books such as "The Art of Drowning" threaten to change the face and purpose of poetry in the 21st century. Let's hope there is plenty more to come from Billy Collins.

I first came across "lines lost among trees" in the Best of American Poetry 97. Next was The Art of Drowning. I feel Collins' presence in each of his poems; he writes himself into every one of them. He relates to his readers in a casual, informal way, not at all stuffy like the great predecessors of English poetry. He makes poems out of even the most hum-drum things of our daily lives, and crafts them in so delicate a way that they become fresh and alive. Collins himself is a very lively and affable person; I've had the opportunity to meet him. Picnic, Lightning however, was a bit of a disappointment; it couldn't top the ingenuity of The Art of Drowning. As for his earlier works...if only I could get my hands on them! They are all out-of-print. Billy Collins is not like other poets. He puts on no airs; he's the real thing.

Billy Collins' latest, 'Picnic, Lightning' is an inspiring string of pearls. Each poem, a lustrous contrast of imagination within reality. As in 'Aristotle', a streak of light in the sky, a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.Collins wrecklessly selects objects that evoke both sullen and inspiring emotions. His talent resides not only in his choice of images but also in his ability to gather them into a lucid believable form, as in 'After the Storm':Soft yellow-gray light of early morning, butter and wool, the two bedroom windows still beaded and streaked with rain.Butter and wool, one can just feel the morning come, the rain gently falling, the mood clearly laid out. This is the excellence that presides over this collection.Buy it, sit with it, let it permeate your senses. You will be a changed person for having read it.

John Updike says of Billy Collins' poems, "...they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides." The poems in this book picked me up and carried me, covered with gooseflesh, through these worlds. The subject matter is the everyday, the invisible behind the visible, the thin shadow of the world obscuring reality. To say that I liked this book is too weak a statement -- say that this book is now a part of me.