Rating: 
Summary: The Best of... THE BEST
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: Even if you don't like poetry, you'll like it
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: yuck
Review: 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).
Rating:
Summary: great poet, great poet laureate
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: [child drinking Nestea or maybe ginger ale]
Review: 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?)
Rating: 
Summary: Hospitable, humorous, lyrical
Review: 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. "
Rating:
Summary: Shorts & Blue Jeans
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Trite, laughable
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Strong, Strong, Strong
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: On Collins
Review: 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.
|
