Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems

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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.

Billy Collins is an English professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, and a visiting writer at Sarah Lawrence College. He is also the 2001-2002 Poet Laureate of the United States. This 96-poem collection is the definitive volume of Billy Collins' work to date. It includes selected poetry from his four previous books, THE APPLE THAT ASTONISHED PARIS, QUESTIONS ABOUT ANGELS, THE ART OF DROWNING, and PICNIC, LIGHTNING (1988-1998), together with twenty new poems. It is a captivating collection of poetry that I enjoyed reading cover to cover.

Quirky. Wry. Amazing. Fun. Witty. Easy. These are some of the words that describe Collins' poetry. He has a knack for revealing the extraordinary in the ordinary. In "Questions About Angels," he writes, "Do they fly through God's body and come out singing?/ Do they swing like children from the hinges/ of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards?/ Do they sit alone in gardens changing colors?" (p. 24). In "The Dead," he observes, "The dead are always looking down on us, they say,/ while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,/ They are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven/ as they row themselves slowly through eternity" (p. 33). "Each one is a gift, no doubt," he writes in "Days," "mysteriously placed in your waking hand/ or set upon your forehead/ moments before you open your eyes" (p. 57). In one of my favorite Collins' poems, "Dharma," he writes, "The way the dog trots out the front door/ every morning/ without a hat or an umbrella/ without any money/ or the keys to her doghouse/ never fails to fill the saucer of my heart/ with milky admiration" (p. 137).

Other poems here contemplate insomnia (pp. 10; 142), Collins' "best cigarette" (p. 55), marginalia (p. 94), shovelling snow with Buddha (p. 103), perusing a Victoria's Secret catalog (p. 109), and undressing Emily Dickinson (p. 119). Those readers who appreciate good wine, good books, and good jazz will discover a kindred spirit in Billy Collins. Perhaps Collins describes the effect of reading his poetry best in "Picnic, Lightning": "It is possible to be struck by a meteor/ or a single-engine plane/ while reading in a chair at home" (p. 98).

G. Merritt

Billy Collins is a poet of body and soul, someone who knows the bite and pleasure of a turn of phrase that enlivens like a shot of pretty-good Irish whisky. "American" is too narrow a designation for poems whose aim is to direct us to the truly human--the whimsical and the sorrowful, the oddly-tough animal underlying that humanity. For those who, like Collins, have the mantle and designation of "master poet" bestowed upon them repeatedly the trick is to earn that praise. Billy Collins has certainly earned whatever well-intentioned men and women may say of him, especially the good: his is a finely honed voice and, at times, that voice wickers into a wonderfully quirky track of experience that never excludes the accidental and fleeting. One cannot say enough about such good and decent men, or their works.

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.

I am a voracious reader of contemporary poetry, but I have never previously been interested in Collins's work, which has seemed to me more or less insignifant. I read this book after he became Poet Laureate, and although I don't hate it, it's not exactly earth-shattering either. I suppose that's the point: Collins wants to be charming and minor, and he's both to a tee. His best poems riff on some well-known idea (like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin) and then kind of get distracted by an image. By associative logic, the poems veer off their own path -- which is often pretty well-trodden -- and into more mysterious and interesting territory. This often works as a technique, although it gets predictable. And Collins is funny, which is a big plus. I tended not to mind that he didn't really have much significant to say. This is poetry as beach reading.

One thing about Collins's technique: you can see Collins's ear getting better in the later books. The first 50 pages or so are just unmelodious, ugly even, and I don't think it's really purposeful. In the later books he gets more comfortable with his breezy sentences and takes more chances with the line. It's not like he's ever a poet of much risk, but the phrasing is (usually) not dull or flat in the later books.

I'm told that most modern poets don't like Billy
Collins. Good. Collins tells little stories of
the inside and outside world, composes jokes small
and large, points to the obvious, leaves some
interesting part unsaid, tickles the daylights out
of you and makes everything seem new again.

The title is, I guess, a reference to the wonderful
book Sailing Alone Around the World by Captain Joshua
Slocum and to the quirky but ultimately disappointing
Journey Around my Bedroom by Javier de Maistre. In
fact, Collins himself refers to the armchair nature
of his adventures several times in the poems.

Thanks to him, I am, like other reviewers of this
collection reading poetry again. But mostly I'm living
some bits of it and writing little poems to my kid.

Thanks, Billy. Especially for The Nightclub.

--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the forthcoming novel bang BANG from Kunati Books.ISBN 9781601640005

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.

This is contemporary poetry in its most dumbed-down form. Collins expects little from his readers, and apparently expects little from himself. Accepted on its own terms, this is okay stuff--agreeable the way a sitcom can be agreeable when your mind is too tired to engage something beautifully complex.

Billy Collins has done more than any other single person to promote banality, stylistic conservatism, and cuteness in American verse. Those who place him at the level of a national poet like Frost miss the point. Certainly as Frost was interpreted by his average reader he was a pretty 'easy' poet, but his poems were elegant in that way: they opened up to very serious readings and were filled with a finally overwhelming negative force. Collins lacks all force whatsoever. He is a hack and he knows it. Mr. Collins, on the off-chance that in a bout of insecurity you've come to this page to read your reviews I just want you to know this: you must come to a decision: either to start writing serious verse or to give it up all together and retreat to greating cards. Programs like your poetry channel on airlines makes me sick and it degrades poetry. Poetry should not be easy. There is nothing classist in this evaluation. The elements at this point that leave great works closed to some and not others are less class-based than ever before. It is rather more a matter of an exertion of meaningful energy on the part of the reader. Certainly those who spend their evenings watching sitcoms will have a hard time with Stevenson, they will want to consume and find that they are asked to produce. Some will turn away, others will make the effort and discover what rewards hard work of the imagination and intellect can yield. Why, Mr. Collins, are you working to undermine this? Why are you working to perpetuate and legitimate a way of reading that is driving high literary culture into extinction?

This is the first book by Billy Collins that I have read, and so I must admit that my opinion may be relatively uninformed, although I think it is safe enough to assume that this is a fair representation of his work thus far. It seems to me that Collins' preoccupation with accessibility has overpowered his poetry, if indeed the contents of this book can be said to be poems at all, rather than cut-up prose. Dullness is the recurring characteristic of the collection, and the famous Collins charm wears thin very quickly. The value of poetry lies in how something is said, rather than what is said, and Sailing Alone Around the Room does not provide that value.

Billy Collins' previous works have been bestsellers, a rare achievement in poetry publishing. He is one of a rare breed-a popular poet. Billy Collins is the current poet laureate of the United States. His previous collections include The Apple that Astonished Paris, The Art of Drowning, and Questions about Angels.
Sailing Alone Around the Room combines poems from all his previous collections as well as a few new ones. It is, in effect, a "greatest hits book". Collins is a poet who does not specialize in any one topic. His inspiration for poems seems to come from reflection and everyday life. The poems he writes about everyday life are not simple. They incorporate simile and metaphor, and give the reader's brain some exercise.
This compilation of previously-published and new poems showcases the many facets of Collins' style. He experiments with ancient forms such as the paradelle and the sonnet, poking fun, and producing images. All the while his self-deprecating humor shows through.
Billy Collins work appeals to a wide audience. His work is very accessible, and if not for its sometime adult subject matter would be appropriate for and understood by children. His poetry is funny on the surface, but when closely read reveals new meanings.

This is a wonderful book of poems. The subjects are so diverse and the titles of the poems are unique. There are several titles that caught my eye such as The Death of the Hat, Shoveling Snow With Buddha, My Best Cigarette, Victoria's Secret, and Questions about Angels. One of the most descriptive and imaginative poems in the book is Victoria's Secret. He conjures up a variety of emotions in this poem by looking at the pictures and facial expressions of the models in the catalog. I enjoy the poem The Death of A Hat, because it talks about an ordinary object and the symbolism that was formally attached to it. According to this poem, a hat symbolized a sense of identity and loyalty. My Best Cigarette is a great poem along the same logic as death of a hat. A cigarette to Billy Collins was like a catalyst in the writing process. It was the best way to relax for him. One of the most personal poems in this book is the Iron Bridge. Collins remembers his mother who recently has died and compares her to a bridge that is as old as her. He is trying to come to terms with his loss and move on with his life in this beautiful poem.

I love the poems in this book with a subtle message. One poem in particular is Advice to Writers. In this poem, Collins says that good writing is polished writing. Therefore, the writing process should be deliberate and never rushed. I loved the poem Aristole. It has so many creative metaphors about the cycle of life contained in the poem. Collins compares the beginning of life to a fish wriggling onto land. He also compares the beginning of life to a first move in a chess game. In the same poem, he compares the middle of life like cities filled with people with a million schemes and looks. Finally, Collins compares the end of life to the last elephant in a parade. I found all the metaphors in this poem to be so insightful.

Billy Collins has several poems about animals in this book. He associates different animals with several human feelings. He writes about the plight of tortured cows in the poem Afternoon with Irish Cows. He ponders the reason for the blindness of mice which is an allusion to the nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice. He writes about how a dog can feel so alone and unwanted in the poem To A Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years From Now.

Some of Billy Collins poems are obviously composed just by observing everyday life. A good example of this is poem The Waitress. In this poem, he writes about all the people who have waited on him in his life. Collins imagines how liberating it must feel for waitresses to be free of their duties in a wonderful metaphor. He writes about how the movies can help someone escape the pressures of everyday life. Sailing Alone Around the Room is an excellent book. Reading it has inspired me to continue writing my own poetry.

I like Collins' poetry, but this particular book has a bad history. The New York Times abused their position by unfairly attacking Collins' previous publisher, Pitt Press, for asking Random House to delay publication of this book by one year. Random House eventually agreed, but only after the New York Times had shown themselves to be willing to ignore the facts and put unfair pressure on a small publisher. My suggestion is, buy Collins' earlier books. You'll get all his previous poems, and you'll have the satisfaction of helping a small press that was a victim of unethical journalism.

At his best, Billy Collins can be funny and clever and unexpected. I have yet to see him other than at his best. This collection offers an excellent selection of Collins's previously published poetry as well as some new ones.

Collins has a way of turning the simple and mundane into the wildly humorous and devastatingly poignant. His accessible style is deceptively simple and, judging by some of the other reviews of the book, a bit off-putting to those I imagine in my head as "those of lesser imagination." Collins's poetry works for me in its simplicity and beauty. But, it's not like I am waiting breathlessly for Collins's next book to be released or for his next appearance on National Public Radio.

It's not like that. Not exactly.

Jeremy W. Forstadt

The title of this book is telling: the narrator of Billy Collins's poems is basically a loser who never does anything interesting, never takes any risks, never lives life--forever sailing around the lonely room of his mundane mind and making asinine observations about a world he doesn't understand. His astonishment at the Irish cow's "cowness," for example, made me want to throw up.

I have nothing at all against "accessible" poetry; but bad poetry masquerading as something profound--that I have a problem with. There are some wonderful accessible poets out there--Stephen Dobyns and Stephen Dunn come to mind. Read them, and maybe you'll be able to see the difference.

I just don't enjoy Collins. His work is very bland for my taste. It has a cutesy kind of charm that wears itself out fairly quickly. Nothing profound or earth-shattering or even thought provoking. Of course I would assume that to be crowned poet laureate, one's work would have to be conventional and non-controversial to the degree that it would be acceptable for the mass market. It is obvious that is what Collins was striving for. In my opinion this work is totally uninspired. I think I would rather read Ginsberg.

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.

What Billy Collins has done for poetry is a very positive thing. By making it accessible and easy to understand, and at the same time connecting with people with his feelings and well-crafted, distinctive poetic voice, he has made poetry entertaining and popular again as it was a long time ago. This collection has most of his best work.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

there's a thousand reasons I could cite in support of my
contention that
Billy Collins oughtta be off'd. but heh,
someone says, he's the poet laureate of the United States!

...
yeah.
when I see a Lutheran minister amble outta the athenaeum with an
armload of Billy's books, I take
a swig of cough syrup and hope that
I can save up enough dough to move
elsewhere (Trinidad & Tobago?)

Billy Collins makes wanna-be poets like myself grit their teeth in frustration! His deceptively simple poems have an intriguing way of surprising the reader with insights and fascinating self-revelations. And the subjects! Victoria's Secret catalogs? Hats? Emily Dickinson--undressing!? What a pleasure to read these and all the other poems in this book. I asked for Collins' other books for Christmas and have been similarly impressed, but my opinion is that "Sailing" contains most of the best poems from those previous editions. Buy it, read it, reread it, share it, as Collins would have all of us do.

I heard the author on the Diane Rehm Show (NPR) one morning while driving in my car. He read some of his poems from this book and I just couldn't believe it: I understood them! They are about every day events or things which Collins transforms for us into unique ways of thinking about them! Some of his poems are sly and funny! He has the most wonderful speaking voice and is such a likable man! Too bad he didn't come with the book! Maybe it's on tape.....Buy it!

i wasn't exactly sure what to expect from collins. the man seems to inspire people to be either rabid supporters or rabid haters of his work. his selected poems is a strong selection from his work and some good new poems. after reading this collection, i can tell you his work is good. he'll never be considered one of the most important poets, and not all of his poems are strong. but he has a great use of humor, and there are several times i found myself laughing out loud. collins is definitely a poet worth reading.

A wonderful collection of poems for those on your list to whom you wish to introduce poetry. This collection of poems reads easily with "first-read" understanding and pleasure as they describe those everyday occurances,viewing them with irregular insight. Nothing long, nothing tedius - just glimpses into our lives sure to bring a wry smile to the reader. Highly recommended.

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.

Billy Collins' work is shiftless, mundane and irresistably dull. His wit lacks humor and the reader, (assuming he/she is an avid poetry reader) should be unimpressed by the second poem of this book. The voice that the reader should hear while reading this monstrosity is the voice of a 6th-grader with a college-level vocabulary. There is no spark in Collins' writing. There is no life in this work. And if that is what it takes to become America's Poet Laureate, I will never read nor review another again!
If, in fact, you are craving poetry with Outlaw flair and a touch of Hunter Thompson, I suggest you read "European Confession" by Timothy Edward Jones (ISBN: 1-4137-2867-7).

...I would write like Billy Collins. Unfortunately, I can't, and there aren't many others who can either. Collins is just as good as he is supposed to be. His poems are wry glimpses at the seemingly mundane world around him, and through his poetry, he locates the humor and the wisdom and the beauty to be found therein. His poems are in turn witty and shocking and poignant. As the back of the cover says, he "begins with the everyday and ends in the infinite." That's just about right. He's got that same gift that poets like Emily Dickinson (the subject of one of his best poems) and Robert Frost had. He can look at the everyday and see the sublime.

This poems are yucky, boring, and will thankfully fall out of public consciousness like New Kids On the Block did.

A world of a better book with a similar title: VOYAGE AROUND MY ROOM by Xavier de Maistre (Introduction by Richard Howard).

My appreciation of Billy Collins's work has been a process of conversion. "Sailing Alone..." provides an excellent case for him as our current national poet laureate.

Three poems immediately stood out and spoke to me at a visceral level: "Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House," "The Rival Poet," and "Insomnia" (there are two versions). The latter poem was significant to me because of its recurrent instantiation as a concept. As a lover of books, I love Collins's "Books": "From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus / I can hear the library humming in the night...I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, / Straining in circles of light to find more light...." Also, "My Number" and "The Dead" are negotiations and whimsical meditations on Death.

Collins is a poet's poet. He often talks about the arts of writing and teaching poetry. Every poet and many readers will understand the intrinsic value of "The Best Cigarette," "Monday Morning" with the pen-chewing student, and "Victoria's Secret." Anyone who's read Wordsworth a hundred times over will appreciate "Lines Composed 3,000 Miles From Tintern Abbey," or those with a Dickinson bent, "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes." An "Afternoon with Irish Cows," will perhaps remind you of a W.C. Williams or Sandburg.

Collins's verse is uniquely American. It rings true as the best of Bukowski and is as insightfully simple as a WC Williams or Merwin.

The poetry of Billy Collins invites comparison to that of Robert Frost. Both are beautiful to hear, and to read, and one is left with the sense that both are in contact with something much deeper than themselves. In addition, both are criticized by some as simplistic, of not having much to say. Collins, like Frost, mines everyday life for its eternal moments, and conveys the timelessness of the mundane in ways that spark the reader to identify with the poet, and then to find something spiritual in the simplicity of the language. Frost's setting is rural New England, whereas Collins writes about the particularity of his own room, and his own life. If you have ever been turned off by poetry that doesn't seem to make any effort to connect to everyday life, then you owe it to yourself to try Billy Collins.

More and more I appreciate the poem that brings poetry down to the familiar, even the mundane. A cup of coffee and a cigarette, or the way leaves look just before a storm. Billy Collins is a master of this kind of simplicity. He grounds you firmly in the world, and then lets the truth of it open out before you. Accessible though never simplistic, direct and dryly funny, Collins is a gem. Read him.

This is the kind of book that slowly draws you into the web. Collins delicately threads the tangible with the abstract so seamlessly that the reader fades into the material without warning. His casual way with words allows the reader to taste the mundane in a refreshly intimate way. Not a book to read in one setting. Instead it should be explored and savored like a rare bottle of wine.

Billy Collins's SAILING ALONE AROUND THE ROOM is a compilation of poetry from the master of suburban verse. Witty, humorous, and acutely observant, Collins never disappoints in his poetry. Though some critics have lambasted Collins for writing cushy, suburban, "white" poetry, I disagree. Such poetry is refreshingly different from the usual autobiographical, self-indulgent, polemic verse that is so dominant these days. Also, Collins does not lapse into the abstruse or academic; his poetry is "hospitable" (to use his own words) and lucid. A great read from a master of American Verse. I hope more poets will go in the direction Collins is going: away from the turgid, self-centered poetry and towards a vigorous, clear, and engaging poetry of the American landscape.

John Adams admonished his son JQ Adams to keep a poet in his pocket. I can think of no better poet to keep in your pcket. Billy's poems aer fresh, funny, and delicious to roll aorund in your mouth. I bring it out at every family occasion and read to the relatives who all guffaw. I love this book.

Mr. Collins' new book is excellent, it contains some of his best poems from his past books and some new poems destined to become all time favorites.

what's this: poetry i love! i had given up, thought poetry the la-la land of dullards. billy collins may be an epiphany in my life! i am actually going to read more poetry now. perhaps the IS other good poetry out there. maybe, just maybe.

All too often people grow up learning to hate poetry because some well-meaning teacher dissected a poem right before their eyes and killed it in the process. Either that, or they were exposed to bizarre free verse poems that made absolutely no sense. No one wants to read stuff they can't understand or that seems to be written in code.

Billy Collins is the antidote to your high school English teacher. He doesn't write in code, but in a simple and understandable, yet vibrant and moving style. His poems will affect you without overwhelming you; they will touch you without assaulting you.

As a poet myself, I'm always intrigued by how other word artists are able to strum deep chords of emotion through simple observations and reflections about our world--chords that may reverberate for years. Billy does this through letting each poem grow into a transformative event. You never leave the poem viewing the world in the same way. I suppose that's what I enjoy most about Billy Collins--his ability to cause the reader to enter the poem while reading it and then end in a different place altogether.

If you hate poetry, try Billy Collins. If you love poetry, my guess is you already have.

This book is called a " National Bestseller "( There are two sections: 'selected poems' and twenty new poems.)
I don't know about the US but where I come from, not a single book of poetry is a seller let alone a bestseller. Ah yes, we are in the USA: that explains a lot.

Well, Mr.Billy Collins deserves to have a national bestseller.
His poems are like tiny odd stories, amusing but all of a sudden ants climb up the desk of the poet ('Winter Syntax'.)There are always those small surprises we don't fully understand (most of the time). Like 'Insomnia' (One of the new poems): a person can't sleep because someone is riding a tricycle inside of him.

What is the bottom line ? I'm under the impression that Mr.Collins is an entertainer. But he will not make it easy on us: there are too many surprises. We try to understand them and sometimes we do. But no matter what, his tiny stories take a hold on us and we have to like them even when we don't want to.

I have been reading poetry all my life. I have a great deal of memorized poetry within myself. I too write poetry.
From what I have read of Billy Collins I do not sense myself really reading poetry. Perhaps the best term for it is 'light verse'. It is clear, based on ordinary life situations, often wry, mildly humorous. Compare it for a moment to another poetry of ' simple vocabulary and everyday life' that of Wordsworth, and see how lacking it is in depth, sublimity, real beauty.
In any case I am not writing to deny the right of others to enjoy the work, or even claim that it is the greatest poetry they ever read.
For me , it simply isn't.

I generally don't like poetry, and I'm an English Major at a large university. However, when one of my professors included a piece from Billy Collins on a first-of-quarter hand out, I knew that this poet was unlike your typical flowery, treacly poet of yesterday.

Billy Collins' works isn't the poetry you may remember -- the boring stuff wrapped up in an unintelligable language for you to decipher. His words pierce your heart, make you smile, laugh and sometimes, nod with a deep understanding, or shed a tear.

I purchased this collection of Mr. Collins' work, and highly recommend it. Especially to poetry-phobes. It won't change your mind about all poetry, but will give you a benchmark for quality, contemporary poetry.

Living in a beach community is a shorts and blue jeans kind of life. The comfortable and casual, "blue jeans kinda style" poetry of Billy Collins, our country's latest Poet Laurete, is a perfect match for the beach life style. In his latest collection of poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room, a collection of new and selected poems from previous works, Collins shows us that poetry can be fun. It can entertain you, make you laugh at the same time it gives you ideas to ponder. In his poem "Introduction to Poetry" Collins asks us not to "tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it; don't begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means." A poem is whatever you want it to be. A book of poetry is a house where poems live.

Being a first time reader of Collins' poetry and vowing to take his advice, I let the poems in Sailing Alone Around the Room read to me. I found it was like eating a tantalizing dessert at a gourmet restaurant. The poems slid into me effortlessly, creating an explosion of moving pictures in my mind. They left me hungry for another taste and then another. When I was full and had no room for another I had to push myself away from the table so that I could properly digest what had been fed into me. The author had become an old friend and we were just having this wonderful converation as we had done so many times before.

In a recent interview, Collins explained the quick connection to his work experienced by many readers encountering him for the first time: "As I'm writing, I'm always reader conscious. I have one reader in mind, someone who is in the room with me, and who I'm talking to, and I want to make sure I don't talk too fast, or too glibly. Usually I try to create a hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem. Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong." Nothing goes "wrong" in "Nostalgia", one of my favorites.

Here's how it begins:

Nostalgia

Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called
the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

And here's how it ends:

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.

Sailing Alone Around the Room is a book of poems to keep close by. Forget your day timers, your calenders, cell phones, palm pilots, your American Express cards. Just take this book of poems with you. Whenever you are in need of a snack, a taste of observation, a chuckle to give you a lift, a thought to ponder, a feeling of awe and wonder, a sense of belonging, the poems will be there for you, just waiting.

In this collection of new and selected poems, Billy Collins riffs on a variety of themes. In "Nostalgia" he asks if we remember the 1340s, or even this afternoon. In "Japan" we feel the weighted wait of a moth on the surface of an ancient temple gong. He reminds us not to beat poetry to death in a backroom with a rubber hose. In essence, Billy Collins reminds us to dance in delight with our words; it is indicative of his success that the best parts of this review are mere paraphrases of his own verse. Tolle, lege: take up and read.

I bought this book at the recommendation of Dave Lee, and I haven't been more pleased with a book of poetry since I first read Gary Short or Yusef Komunyakaa. This book is my current constant companion. I can't speak highly enough of it. Simply beautful and simply astounding.

These collected and new poems by our current Poet Laureate are the poems that you have always heard echoing in the recesses of your mind, now fully articulated by an external voice. And what a voice! Billy Collins deserves praise for this wonderful book on that point alone.

Billy, as one reviewer in the dust cover notes, draws us in with humor to deeper, more significant moments of life. Each poem is in itself a treat that at first appears simple, but winds up being a vast ocean of thought.

My favorite poems include "Shoveling Snow With Buddha" and "Marginalia." In my opinion, Billy Collins represents the best of American poetry with the same importance as William Stafford and William Carlos Williams. I am certain you will feel the same way after you read this book.

I adore Billy Collins. He has a unique voice, a way of putting things that is very pleasing. His poetry shows humor, wit, and intelligence, not to mention talent. I have never cared for "epic" poetry, and many poems leave me mildly disappointed because they seem to be trying too hard or are hard to relate to personally for me. However, Collins' poems seem to flow naturally with one's stream of conciousness. His work has rekindled my interest in this art form.

What I appreciated most about Collins poetry was its accessibility in both language and universality of content. He talks of love, of life, of sex, of death, and of rebirth. He talks about dogs barking, clouds moving across the sky, of hats and waitresses. Some have commented that he is `playing it safe', but I think it goes beyond that into the shared commonality of all men and women: life. There are certain things we all can relate to, and others we can't -- this is what separates Collins works from his contemporaries more than any other aspect of his works: the appeal to your average Joe who has not studied poetry, but knows what he likes. We see this same path taken by other great poets as well: Wordsworth, Blake, Frost -- taking the ordinariness of life and making it extraordinary.
From his musing on the past in poems such as Nostalgia, Splitting Wood and The Waitress with their longing for the past, to the more philosophical The Butterfly Effect and Days focusing on the implications of actions on life and their varied outcomes, to the more prosaic Tuesday, June 4, 1991 in which he gives us a guided tour of his day, Collins views on life are as varied as life itself. In his beautiful and humorous poem, Afternoon with Irish Cows, we are ushered by Collins into the mind of both the poet and the subject -- in this case, a cow -- and see both in the eternal scheme of life as playing a very similar role. As Collins says when he hears one of them crying:

Yes, it sounded like pain until I could see
the noisy one, anchored there on all fours,
her neck outstretched, her bellowing head
laboring upward as she gave voice
to the rising, full bodied cry...

As Collins watches and listens, he no longer feels pity, but a sense of wonder and awe at the life of this other creature whom he sees as having the same goal and motivations as himself:

...I knew that she was announcing
the large, unadulterated cowness of herself,
pouring out the ancient apologia of her kind
to all the green fields and the gray clouds...

The role of the subject and the poet are the same: to show the world who they are, and the necessity of self in the grand scheme of life -- even if only as a herald of self existence. This `life for life's sake' approach to his poetry brings us into a sense of ease and to an endearment of his texts if merely for the lack of morbidity or futility found in many of today's poets. In the majority of Collins works as presented in this collection, we see that life is pleasant, with wonder in every breath we take and syllable we utter. It is in the living of life that we find ourselves at peace; it is simply in being who and what we are that we find contentment and solace.
When critiquing the poetry of this great poet -- one who served as the Poet Laureate of the United States for two consecutive terms and who is a professor of English at not one, but two colleges, it seems best to remember that he is, after all, human. In point of fact, it is this humanity that endears Billy Collins to his readers: the universality of topic and the poetic vernacular language he utilizes bring the ethereal down to the common man.

You will read these poems out loud to friends and even, when a certain poem really hits you, force feed it to a stranger. These poems are as haunting a conversation and as necessary.

Billy Collins has been compared to Robert Frost over and over again, but Collins is cooler than Frost. COLLINS IS THE ROCK STAR OF POETRY.

Billy Collins looks at things big and small with a bottomless heart and a ceaseless imagination and a thankfulness as big as the galaxy. To read his poems is to learn how appreciative one person can be, yet Collins never takes himself too seriously, always having the first and the last laugh and making us laugh along with him.

Some poems have made me both laugh and cry, and I cannot, CANNOT wait for his new book to come out. What's The Trouble With Poetry? It'll be fun finding out.

I typically find it difficult to appreciate poetry, but Billy Collins' work is an exception. "Sailing Alone Around the Room" is a collection of his previous poetry and was recommended to me by an English instructor. His language and ideas are accessible and deceptively simple, as you go back and read his poems for a second time and find that something profound has been conveyed. One of my favorites is his "On Turning Ten," as a young boy leaves behind his youth and laments that he "used to believe/ there was nothing under my skin but light./ If you cut me I could shine./ But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,/I skin my knees. I bleed." It's beautiful imagery and a beautiful metaphor. Lovely work!

This book of clean, unaffected poems held my attention completely; I didn't want to put it down. Collins savors each moment in many dimensions, writing what we know but don't see about life's simplest moments. He writes with deep insight couched in words that fill my heart, comfort my worries, introduce me to new facets of my own journey. I highly recommend the poetry of Billy Collins.

I first throught I wouldn't like Billy Collins. There's a kind of superiority to his tone at times, and his subject matter seems to be about subjects always covered in poetry, but I have to admit that reading parts of this book has really convinced me. Amazing. Seems like he's not taking himself wholly seriously, which is rare to see in poets.

Billy Collins is a very special person for his ability to get so many people interested in poetry. This book gives a good, very accessible selection of his humorous, intelligent poetry that earned him US poet laureate-ship & status of being by far the best-selling poet in America. This is the first Billy Collins book to get.

I enjoy Billy Collins' poems, but I do not feel this book is worthwhile if you already own his earlier books. His books are all pretty recent and in print. There are no obscure gems unearthed. To spend the cost of a hardcover on merely 20 new poems seems a lot. I would have just preferred a full new collection. A retrospective would be more appropriate in another decade or two.

You can tell a lot about his poetry just from that he writes with the name "Billy" rather than William or possibly Bill. He writes with a poetic clarity & intellect of great genius, but he does seem to cut himself short sometimes. It's very hard to read his writing & not be rapt with his humor & insights. But he does sometimes...or often...or, well, as much as possible...prefer to be coy rather than write many of the great thoughts you know he's capable of & probably has thought while having coffee & oranges for breakfast. At any rate, he's a great poet laureate, because he does invite many more people into poetry than would otherwise find interest.

Billy Collins describes his poetry best himself, in "Lines Lost Among Trees", when he writes of "...the little insight at the end/wagging like the short tail/of a perfectly obedient spaniel/sitting by the door." Many of the poems throughout this collection feature a turn of phrase- if not a twist, then a recapitulation- in the final stanza that makes the reader draw a breath, then say "Yes. That's it."

There's little that's academic or self-consciously poetical about Collins' writing, although he is both a professor and a poet for whom his art is subject matter as much as medium. Some of the best, most touching and funniest works in this collection deal with poetry itself, but none are contrived. There's sensuality along with intelligence- "Osso Buco", "The Best Cigarette" and others deal concretely but delicately with the sensations of living and a poet's response to them. There's jazz in plenty, evoked, imitated and responded to, and plenty of musings (and musings on musings) on the poetical old standbys of sex and death. And it all works.

I couldn't find lines better than Collins' own to begin this review, nor to end it (from "Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles"):

How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner;
cross my legs like his, and listen.

Ha Ha! Mr. Collins is soooo funny, Ha Ha! Yet even when I laugh, I cry. He has put a poem in my eye! I recommend this book for everyone!

Billy Collins' "Sailing Alone Around the Room" is a treasure. If there is one book of poetry I would hand to someone who has never read poetry, this would be the one. Collins conversational approach is accessible but has incredible depth and heart at the same time. He's kind of like a favorite funny uncle who just happens to be a world renowned writer. You get the sense that he can hold his own in a room full of Ph.D.s but share a laugh with the gardener who barely speaks English.

Collins poems deal with everything from Osso Bucco, the Victoria's Secret catalog to loss and death. Hard to believe someone could cover that range with such a light, deft touch but he does. It's no wonder he was America's Poet Laureate. I smiled constantly while reading this book as I saw myself and almost everyone I know represented on the pages. Collins world is not perfect but you don't detect the bitterness some times leveled at life through poetry. Instead there is a quizzical acceptance as Collins holds life "up to the light" the way he suggests students examine poetry in his poem "Introduction to Poetry".

I think of Collins as a poetic Jerry Seinfeld (without the mansion in the Hamptons). He examines the minutiae of life and finds the larger truths. His fears are laid bare as are his hopes for justice and his love for the small simple moments in life that can bring such joy that we so often overlook. In a word, it's an honest book. Collins is a master writer and one that everyone who loves words and loves life should have over for dinner. Unfortunately, he is a busy guy but fortunately we can all read "Sailing Alone Around the Room". I guarantee you'll feel like to know Billy Collins after reading this book and if you don't want to live in his world, you will have surely enjoyed spending time in it.

Billy Collins is a master at writing poetry not just for the beauty of the words, but to also convey a message. Until I read Sailing Alone Around the Room, I wasn't a fan of this genre. Mr. Collins has single-handedly changed that. I'd like to say I have a favorite, but honestly, I liked them all! I think the U.S. has found its next poet laureate! If you liked this book, also check out From the Heart by Kendall Bell. It's short stories, but like Mr. Collins' book, very inspirational.

This is very accessible lyrical poetry. I recently had the privilege of hearing him read, and as he said he likes the approach of "considering the reader .. Imagine that". There are some "shameless appeals to dog lovers" (to quote Collins), such as the poem about his dog (Dharma),..." if only I were not her god.". Often there is the unexpected phrase or a darkening, and something unusual happens in the reader, some glance in the mirror that is a surprise. For example from "On turning ten", "It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light.".

His poems are natural and relaxed, with a sense of humor about their structure, such as the poem "Sonnets", whose lines count down the fourteen lines of the sonnet. Perhaps his poem "Forgetfulness", reminds me of Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art". Some of the poems create a real atmosphere, like "I am listening to John Hartman whose dark voice can curl around the concepts of love, beauty, and foolishness like no one else's can. "

You can tell a lot about his poetry just from that he writes with the name "Billy" rather than William or possibly Bill. He writes with a poetic clarity & intellect of great genius, but he does seem to cut himself short sometimes. It's very hard to read his writing & not be rapt with his humor & insights. But he does sometimes...or often...or, well, as much as possible...prefer to be coy rather than write many of the great thoughts you know he's capable of & probably has thought while having coffee & oranges for breakfast. At any rate, he's a great poet laureate, because he does invite many more people into poetry than would otherwise find interest. A new & selected poems by him now is perfect, & from the first poem about the barking dog solo that made Beethoven famous to the last poem, about throwing paper airplanes at the reader, it's a very fun book.

Billy Collins' poetry is fun.

What makes Collins' poetry stand above others' poetry? Collins makes profound observations without a moment of pretension. His poetry is accessible and written with the assumption that poetry should be read and enjoyed by all kinds of people, not just academics and students.

Once again, Collins surprises, me but not so much to the point in which is poetry moves me as far from my seat. Naturally we are entitled to bring free verse to the page, but with the meter in which he used which is to date back to the 19th century, which is not entirley erie of the fact that Collins is exceptional at it.
If I were to read and re-read, all and in between every nature of every word, and then be moved, not to the left brain, but to the right, and then in between every cranny, then I would most likely bow my head to Collins, and no as everyone esle why he is considered Poet Laurette

I love this book because it expects absolutely nothing of the reader. This is easy-reading, easy-listening poetry. You can read the poems during commercials, and, best yet, you don't have to read them two or three times to get the point. Even better, you can be multi-tasking while reading the poems and not miss a thing! Everything is as plain as the nose on your face. The words are simple, the themes are simple--if only we'd been assigned THIS back in Poetry 101, we'd have all aced the classes, and just THINK what are QPAs would have been. I hope Jorie Graham and Adrienne Rich and their ilk are listening up! Billy Collins is the man!

"Sailing Alone Around the Room" is so unexpected and funny and poignant and even exquisite. Collins' poems involve you like Alice when she stepped through the looking glass or fell down the rabbit's hole. And you're so comfortable, and the adventure is so real you don't want to leave. It's like being picked up in a three-wheeled tempo and carted off to places you hadn't thought to go, yet places you recognize when you arrive.

In Billy Collins book "Sailing Around the Room", he brings together poems from "The Apple That Astonished Paris", "Questions About Angels", "The Art of Drowning" and "Picnic, Lightning" along with twenty new poems. Mainstream critics give wide acclaim for his poetry, so the remaining question is whether or not his new poems measured up to the status of Laureate.

In the new poems Collins retains the same conversational tone as his previous work. Collins also continues to poke fun at elitist critics with his reverence for the simple and straightforward in "Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles". He refers to elitism as an iron turnstile to be pushed at (not everyone can gain admittance), and gives a made-up title of "Vortex on a String" which is a concept in superconductivity. The other title which he mentions in the poem is "Horn of Neurosis", quite possibly a psychological one. Poetry does not have to be this complicated. Collins pays homage to Chinese poetry, which focuses on simple concrete imagery, and wants to learn more about it.

A critical difference in his previous poetry and the new entries is the amount of explanation included. He explains his images more in the new poems through sparse commentary, and gives a greater insight into how he perceives certain objects, animals, people or situations. For instance, in "Dharma", his dog is to be envied or admired for the simplistic life that only people as great as Gandhi and Thoreau have achieved. Contrast this with another dog poem, "Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House" from "The Apple That Astonished Paris", where the dog is not his own. All we know about the dog is that it barks. We don't know why it barks, if the owners are cruel, we just know that it barks. There is distance here, a lack of personal connection. Although Collins has written personally in other poems, the personal reflections in these new poems are more front and center.

So if you liked Collins previous work, "Sailing Alone Around the Room" will not disappoint. The twenty new poems make the book worthwhile to purchase. For fans that are missing a book or two, this makes an excellent choice for a varied collection.

http://drtucker.blogspot.com/2007/05/horn-player-neurosis.html
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The transience of moments is often the subject of inquiry by artists, philosophers, and scientists alike. It is the central focus of the system of thought behind what is called here in the West as "yoga". For a yoga practitioner, Billy Collin's verse would qualify as a potential source of "bliss". Sitting with my legs uncrossed and firmly at the foot of an plush arm chair - I take a break from the Eastern asceticism to enter into Collin's world. Pleasure was the outcome when a particular moment in Collin's verse activated all the "chakras" that purportedly lie along my spine and analogous to the Western concept of "mind, body and soul"; transcending time and space. And Billy Collins does this all with wry wit and a ironic sense of humor. Often musing on scenes from the past (I guess that's the constraint of the arm chair! : "Nostalgia", "The Waitress", "Splitting Wood") and some topics waxing on the philosophical ("The Butterfly Effect" - which deals with certain actions and their resulting outcomes). The verse, depending on the reader's cultural background (think like a White Anglo Saxon Protestant for maximum effect) in an optimal situation (kids asleep, tv off) will resonate in all yogic "chakras". Try this with Milton's "Paradise Lost" which I long abandoned as culturally and historically inaccessible - at least from a casual reader's perspective. I thoroughly enjoyed and was at some points - profoundly moved by Billy Collin's anthology: "Sailing Around The Room".

This collection of poems should carry a warning label - the contents are additive. I'm hooked, so is every person I know who picks it up - it is "unputdownable". When has good poetry ever been this much fun?

Very funny. A great way to learn about philosphy while having a good time. Fun to read while on a road trip.

Within the writing universe, there are certain prose writers who can take the every day contingencies of life and weave them into stories that both entertain and delight us. Author Richard Ford comes immediately to mind. For poets, the task seems much more difficult. The compact language of poetry leaves little room for detailed description and prolonged narrative. However, Billy Collins' new book of poems, "Sailing Alone Around the Room", is a delightful collection of poems that elevates the mundane and ordinary elements of daily life above the drab existentiality of everyday existence.

Collins, a two-term Poet Laureate of the United States, writes with clarity, humor, and insight. "Sailing Alone Around the Room" is a collection of both previously published and new poems that continues Collins' tradition of writing poetry that is readable, understandable, and relevant (and frequently irrelevant). It is poetry that is meant to be read and enjoyed, not slashed and burned by angry academics who seem to think that comprehensible poetry is a sin against their intellects.


The previously published selections come from 1988's "The Apple That Astonished Paris," 1991's "Questions About Angles," 1995's "The Art of Drowning," and 1998's "Picnic, Lighting." This new volume will reenergize Collins' fans and amuse and enchant new readers. Collins has a unique ability to personify concepts and, yet, remain poetic in function and form. In "Bar Time" Collins writes "...when Ordinary Time slouches past in a topcoat/rain running off the brim of his hat/the late edition like a flag in his pocket." In "The Death of the Hat" Collins tells us, "Today the mailboxes on the roadside/and the spruce trees behind the house/wear cold white hats of snow." But, "The Death of the Hat" is much more than just a poem about hats and the personification of mailboxes and trees. Collins' poem is about people and the lives they live and leave behind. He finishes the poem with "And now my father, after a life of work/wears a hat of earth/and on top of that/ a lighter one of cloud and sky - a hat of wind." Marvelous.


My advice? Put on your hat, brave the wind, and head down to the bookstore. This is a volume that is well worth the trip.

It helped articulate more clearly some of my long held questions about Christ. After further ponderance, I felt an affirmation in NOT knowing the answers to many of life's hard questions. Additionally, I felt a sense of celebration in living with the tension of a life of mystery in following Christ. I highly reccommend this book for those who wish to pursue God in a deeper way in a world that may be hostile or ignorant of the Journey.

Michale Marion

I giggled and laughed and gasped and wept reading my first book of BC's poetry, and this was it, his "best of." Billy seems to be the kind of man I would love to know: intelligent, sensitive, funny, caring, lustful, macho, a good son (even if he has "No Time" to stop) and a good master to his beloved Jeannine; what would you like to bet he is also a good lover? This is why he has so many female fans: we are smart and discerning, and he is all the good things wrapped up in one smart, sexy package. AND he writes THE ABSOLUTE BEST POEMS, many of them wrapped up in this package, SAILING ALONE AROUND THE ROOM. (I have to rush out and get the other books. I can't stand to imagine what I'm missing out on!) I'm trying to think of one more thing I could want from a poet, but I can't. Billy has me spellbound. (It's not all about sex appeal, either, believe me. His poetry is smart and dazzling, fresh, smooth, and as artful as anything ever written.) I can't wait to lay my hands and eyes and heart on Billy again!

Billy Collins is on fire. 'The Rival Poet' is a great poem full of splendid wit. Looking at 'Victoria's Secret', you can see why this man has the gift he has. He is a monster of a writer with wit that has you running down to the local bar so you can try and drop it on your friends. Very cutting edge. Very entertaining.

Thank you for this book and showing us that poetry lives in our daily lives, can be light and whimsical, and that there's poetry and humor all around us if we choose to see it. The imagery of that annoying barking dog that we all know about barking out his notes in the symphony was just such an example of seeing the humor and poetry in our daily lives. This book will bring poetry into the same room with you. It is appropriately named as I found myself looking around the room for examples of poetry in daily life while reading this book. Great approach! I highly recommend this book to those who enjoy contemporary poetry.

Oh, I adore this man. He is funny and loving and human in all of our classic and frail forms.

I'm kind of highbrow, overanalytical and a bit of a literary snob. Billy Collins satisfies all of those urges in me -- to be literary and speak to one another on a fairly developed level. He gets there.

But, he's also base and sexy and manly, and that pleases me, too. This collection of poems amuses -- but it's not as remarkably interesting as some of his prior work. This book is, however, an excellent way to get those who tend to be immune to poetry's come hither glances, to embrace it..... As William Carlos Williams has said, this is important work: "It is difficult to get the news from poems, but men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."

This book is so funny - my partner and I read it out loud to each other, and fall over laughing at many of them. Collins has a great sense of humor.

I heard the author on the Diane Rehm Show (NPR) one morning while driving in my car. He read some of his poems from this book and I just couldn't believe it: I understood them! They are about every day events or things which Collins transforms for us into unique ways of thinking about them! Some of his poems are sly and funny! He has the most wonderful speaking voice and is such a likable man! Too bad he didn't come with the book! Maybe it's on tape.....Buy it!