I could never really get into poetry, although I am a fan of Jazz and Spoken Word (close kin). A lot of poetry to me seems long winded, obscure, pretentious, and drawn out. Mr. Collins work is just the opposite. Eloquent and profound. I feel his words, and they have inspired me to read more of his works and the works of new authors as well. I finished "BrainChild: Visions of a Blind Poet" by Derek Alexander, and found it to be an excellent read. I can't wait to get my copy of "Tuesday's Dreams." Thank you, Mr. Collins, for opening my eyes to the wonderful world of poetry.

Months ago, while searching through amazon, I came across this CD. I had not before heard of or read any of Billy Collins work, but since I enjoy reading poetry as well as writing it myself, I thought I would give this disk a chance, so I ordered it.

After receiving it, I listened to it for the first time in the car, while driving across the city to meet friends at a new, upscale club. I remember sitting at a stop light, and having tears run down my cheeks. Maybe it was because I happened to be in love. Maybe it was because the poem forced me to think back on days gone by. Maybe it was because I'm a romantic. But one simple line begging a pardon over egg salad stains had me wiping off the mascara that travelled downward.

Billy Collins has a way of grasping the feelings within us that we try so hard to keep under wraps. He can be funny and uplifting one moment, and shockingly poignant the next. But always, he is honest. I think it must have been the honesty that suddenly jarred my emotions.

Since purchasing this CD, I have bought several of his books. I'm hooked.

Highly, HIGHLY recommended.

There is little to say other than Billy Collins is a gift to this and future generations, and hearing the poet speak the poet's words is exceedingly satisfying. There is much to laugh about while listening to this collection and one can only hope that more recordings of this wordsmith will be forthcoming.

I enjoyed the poems in this book very much. It is impossible to pick a favorite, because I loved them all. I really enjoy reading poems about different human experiences. Poetry 180 is filled with almost every human emotion.

I loved the poem entitled Love Poem 1990. It is about a man falling in love at different stages in his life from childhood to old age and how he feels about it. Another one of my favorite poems is entitled May. It is about the painful experience of putting a dog to sleep. The Green One Over There is a wonderful but sad poem about the relationship between a sister and a brother. I could really relate to the way siblings compete as described in this poem. The subject matter of the poems in this book are diverse. I never knew a subject could evoke such emotion. One of these poems is entitled What Would I Do. It is an insightful poem about what a husband would do if his wife cheated on him. The Quest is a excellent poem about a mother's fear that her daughter will be hurt and the extent she would take to protect her.

I was drawn to some of these poems because of the title. I loved the titles Vegetarian Physics, The Poem of Chalk, 1-800 Hot Ribs, and The Grammar Lesson. These are humorous and descriptive poems I could read over and over just for a laugh. My appreciation for poetry has increased so much. I loved this book.

The premise of this anthology is a poem a day for high school reading, or I might think for a high school reader. It is a wonderful little text. The works are neither simplistic nor obscure and cover the broad range in style and subject of contemporary poetry. Be advised, not all of them are "new" works, and not all important contemporary writers are represented:(Some of the BIG big names are not here). Still, for anyone wanting to develop familiarity with what has been going on in the world of poetry there is a lot of pleasure at a reasonable price.

I rather like the idea that there is no obvious agenda here, nor any pretense of "the best." Readability seems to be the standard. It is a book for a bus-stop, or the short ride home. It is light and easily portable. I can envision a poem over breakfast, or one to conclude an evening of study. Along those lines, the print is nicely laid out; it's the sort of book that I can read without my specs - after all my discovery of poetry in high-school was decades ago.

In the heyday of the pin-up girl, Billy DeVorss offered gorgeous women rich in color, glamour, fashion, and appeal. With a sincere appreciation of the female form and the romantic, artful eye of a painter, DeVorss pin-ups boldly engage the viewer with confidence, charm, and grace. These were sweethearts, not hussies, icons of love, not lust. Pin-Up Poster Book: The Billy DeVorss Collection is a timeless memorial of the golden age of pin-ups now available for a modern generation to rediscover what their grandfathers knew -- the inspiring allure of a pretty girl artfully presented.

This collection is much more interesting *and* funny than a more recent anthology of bad poetry, because it draws so heavily on great poets--Wordsworth, Byron, Poe et al. Laughing at semiliterate amateurs is a cheap shot. The wonder is the follies of the talented, and Stuffed Owl displays these. The introductory matter and editorial comments are also brilliantly funny, and the index--yes, the index--is a scream. THIS TITLE SHOULD BE READILY AVAILABLE (publisher please note.)

If you are asking yourself "how can drowning be an art?" you have sensed some of the wry humor that he includes in his poetry. I've only read a handful of poems, but I can already sense the way he puts a plain style to an often comic end. He hasn't been "laugh out loud" funny yet, but he still offers more humor than most contemporary poets. This isn't by chance, either. He knows it:

I am swaying now in the hour after dinner,/ a citizen tilted back on his chair, / a creature with a full stomach-- / something you don't hear much about in poetry, / the sanctuary of hunger and deprivation. / You know: the driving rain, the boots by the door, / small birds searching for berries in winter. ("Osso Buco")

I think that is a wonderful description of much contemporary poetry which many people feel must stem from pain rather than pleasure.

Collins is also willing to be... well... quirky. Here is his description of the types of paintings he likes, from a poem called "Metropolis:"

I like the calm rustic ones: a surface of lake, / the low bough of an oak like a long arm, / a blue smudge of distant hills, / anything with cows, especially if they are standing / in a stream, their large, vacuous faces / staring into the warm nineteenth-century afternoon. / And if one has lowered her head to drink / and the painter has indicated with flecks of white / the water pouring down from the animal's mouth, / then the day, I feel, has achieved a modest crest. //

. . . . . . . . .

You can have that bronze sculpture by the elevators: / "Revolution Holding the Head of Error / and Standing Over the Cadaver of Monarchy." / My place is here, leaning forward, wandering / through the microscopic eyelash details of / "Still Life with Herring, Wine and Cheese," / "Still Life with Tobacco, Grapes and a Pocket Watch," / "Still Life with Porcelain Vase, Silver Tray, and Glasses,"

The line that begins "anything with cows" is as close as I've come to laughing out loud. I don't know why, but something about the honest incongruity I find funny. And I love the parodic title of the sculpture (I assume it's a parody) as a counterpoint to the simplicity of the still life pictures. I think it is clear that his poetry is more in the vein of the still life than the epic or allegorical, and I find his voice refreshing.

The best poem in the collection is "The Invention of the Saxophone" which brings together all of the concerns he develops in this wonderful collection.

I adore Billy Collins and this is one of my favourite collections. His words are honest and simple and his cadence is refreshing. I can't think of a poet to compare Collins to, he writes a unique style that is impossible not to love. If you poetry, buy this book. If you hate poetry, buy this book and it will change your mind. Collins' writing isn't difficult to understand and it is a simplistic treat in such a complex world.

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.

If you know and enjoy Billy's poems this volume is a necessity. There are some earlier pieces that are brilliantly focused and tight -- like a joke and a punchline. Others are more subtle, but always clear in language and meaning. There is no contemporary poet that I would recommend more highly.

Also check out The Best Cigarette CD for a great collection of Billy reading his work.

Collins has a wonderful, dry wit that shines through many of his poems. He has gained quite a reputation as a highly accessible poet, meaning that his poems appeal to a wide audience. And perhaps this is one of the reasons why he was selected to be the Poet Laureate of the U.S.

To say that Collins' poems are "accessible" may seem a bit of a slight. For, while Collins' use of simple and spare language may mean the average reader won't need to go running to his or her dictionary every stanza, that is not to say his poems are pure fluff. For example, in "Flying to a Funeral," Collins captures the emotional flux caused by a death:...

Collins is light and playful in many of his poems. He highlights the mundane details of our lives and makes us delight in them, see them as something other than the dreariness we make them out to be. Collins is a very imaginative poet, as well. He is able to write about History as if it were a houseguest, or even write verse about "The Morning After My Death":...

In this collection, Billy Collins covers the standard poetic targets of love, death, and art. In between, he helps us see the universality of experience, peppering it with laughter at ourselves -- and our humanness.

author of DREAMING YOUR REAL SELF, DREAM BACK YOUR LIFE, and WHO'S CRAZY, ANYWAY?

Billy Collins takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. His juxtaposition of images and ideas is whimsical, surprising, and always delightful--from the simple act of weighing his dog to a single angel dancing on the head of a pin in time with the music of a jazz combo. This is poetry to read aloud, to let it touch you deeply, to make you laugh and wish you could write and see the world as he does. Prepare to be captivated by his flights of imagination without struggling to understand.

I only happened to come across Billy Collins by sheer accident at the bookstore. Curious, I pulled it out and began to read. I, a T.S. Eliot fanatic, was struck down by the absence of those very things I love about Eliot. Collins has a deceptively simple style bereft of even the vaguest trace of poetic posturing. He is not obsessed with language and never picks a word just for the echoes it might produce. One thing I noticed while reading the other reviews of this book was the repition of the word 'accessible,' so I'm not the only one to believe that Collins can be argued about at the dinner table while you're waiting for dessert to be brought out. (Of course, at that point dessert may just never get brought out.) This does not mean that Collins has a 'point' he wishes to express with each poem. On the contrary, each poem leaves a distinct aftertaste that lingers in those deliciously ripe moments after you close the book for a second to savor what you have just finished reading. It is this blend of philosophy and beauty that draws you into his poetry and makes you hunger for more.

This book is full of the jazz of every day life. Gorgeous in its word-pictures, imagery, and rhythms, and with a ripe, bursting sense of humor that comes out at all opportunities. It is poetry, "even for musicians."

This is a book for body and soul... for everyone... it's so accessible, it draws the reader in deep, before awareness is present ... it is an exploration ...

Collins is the funniest, wittiest poet of our day, and now the national Poet Laureate. His work is great.

I recommend this book to everybody.

I don't doubt that it's possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson's poems in editions like this. But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote. You are reading what earlier editors _wish_ she had written - a sort of 'tidied-up' and regularized version, the badly tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren't.

In a way, the situation is a bit like the one that prevails with regard to food. Would you rather eat natural food or genetically modified food? Maybe the modified food doesn't taste any different, but it might be doing harmful things to you that the author of real food never intended. So why take a risk when we can have the real thing ?

There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED's poems. These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson. Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, along with reader's editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader. Details of their respective reader's editions are as follows.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

For those who don't feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson's abridgement of his Reader's edition, an excellent selection of what he feels were her best poems:

FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson's Poems. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages. New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound).

Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson's edition. Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing?

This book is awesome! Everyone should buy it.

This is a superb edition of Dickinson's poems. It is "reader friendly" with updated punctuation (which purists may not like) with an excellent selection. The Billy Collins introduction is outstanding, being highly informative and entertaining without any pretensions whatsoever. He adds great insight into Dickinson's use of common meter, language, metaphor, and other techniques. Grab a bottle of water and an apple and spend a great afternoon or two with this exceptional volume.

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.

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.

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.

A lot of people have been telling me to read Billy Collins. It's not that I dislike his poetry. It's funny, observant, and overwhelmingly accessible. Even if you rarely read poetry, you will find nothing here to intimidate you.

Accessibility is fine as long as it opens the door to deeper things. I read this entire book in two short sittings and found the bulk of it banal. Only one poem struck me as worth reading a second time. I could carp about prosy phrasing, but the main complaint I have is that I fail to sympathize with Collins' cushy life. Almost all of the poems in here are about thoughts that occured to him while he was sitting around listening to jazz or reading books. To say these are trivial ruminations might condemn the sources of their inspiration-- yet the way he states them, at very least, failed to electrify me.

I like what Collins has been doing as the Poet Laureate of the United States to promote poetry. But sail around this book if you desire more from your reading. There are plenty of poets out there today who are digging deeper.

Picnic, Lightning was the first book of Billy Collins' that I read. I bought it because I flipped open the book to "buzzing around the house on espresso" and that Victoria's Secret poem. After I took the book home and read it a few times, I realized how much I liked Collins' poetry for its kindness. There certainly is the kind of poetry which freezes a moment in your life and then breaks it. However, my thirst for poetry requires a lot of variation--I can't always be on some lyric cusp. Picnic, Lightning has enough depth to encourage me and enough lightness to hold my everyday, and a care for words that holds my interest. Plus it's funny. This book holds down a unique place in my life. Perhaps this is no dark tunnel and crashing entry back into the light, but it's Wednesday (again) and I need something between lunch and dinner that makes sense.

Billy Collins is the wittiest poet around. Period. His work, as John Updike says, is more serious than it seems. Collins crowds his poems with the world of material things, and unflinchingly celebrates the earth. His poems are of humanity, and the earth finally. And, all the poems in this book radiate like a sun, in different seasons, at different times of night and day, and nourish the earth, and us.

"Marginalia" is a beautiful poem about our need to connect to one another, evidenced by reading what people have written in the margins of library books. Very moving.

"Japan" is a masterpiece poem that is haikuesque in style, but is not haiku, and is truly exquisite in the compression and power it uses to render its passion in tercets ....

"The Death of The Hat" is a fine poem that begins by musing over the fact that modern men no longer wear hats ... and ends by memorializing the speaker's father ... a great poem!

These poems are absolutely fabulous! All of them are great.

This is GREAT poetry from a GREAT poet, who as of a couple weeks ago, has become our nation's Poet Laureate. I recommend this book to everybody.