Rating: 
Summary: With the Courage of Simplicity
Review: "...now I am wondering if you are even listening/and why I bother to tell you these things/that will never make a difference..." (from "Night Letter to a Reader," B. Collins)But they do. They do make a difference. Perhaps it is not what Billy Collins is saying that is important so much as how he says it -- with the courage of simplicity. He speaks in words that resonate like music in the heart, not as symphonies or brass bands, but with the smoky blues of a darkness that must sometimes enfold the living and breathing spirit, or the rhythm and beat of blood pumping through animal veins, or the calm hum of a tune that accompanies you through the working day, and then, long into the night. Often, the hum is still there in the morning. Collins' poetry lasts that way. "There was nothing to write about/except life and death/and the low warning sound of the train whistle." If there are only three topics for the writer, Collins has created a simple yet powerful poetry out of all three.
Rating: 
Summary: A Casual Match in a Very Dry Field
Review: Billy Collins didn't publish his poems in book form until after he was forty. Despite this fact, he became Poet Laurette for the United States from 2001-2003 (and he may be again, for all we know). There are plenty of people who like to dismiss his writing as simple, or who will say that it deals with bland subjects. I am not one of those people. From the first full poem, "The Country," Collins generates words that count more and more as the book goes on. He can titilate a reader's sense of fancy, as he does in "The Country," or create a moment of true wonder about the lives of people outside a reader's world, as he does in the bathhouses of "Istanbul." He doesn't waste words, and I for one was thankful for that mark of respect. He values his reader because he writes the poems in "Nine Horses" with clarity and precision, and yet maintains an easy grace as he moves from line to line. In "Litany," Collins turns the idea of poetic imagery on itself with sparkling joviality, and it is easy to see why such poems have entered the popular mind so quickly. A personal favorite is "Tipping Point," which asks the question, When does life's wave crest to become an ebbing and not a flowing? No matter which poem I read, however, I couldn't wait to get to the next one. Collins is a modern talent, who is bringing poetry to the forefront of popular literature again (no, it never really went away, of course, but without poets like Collins, it might). I respect him because he, as a writer, respects his reader. I like his words because, well, they are fine words. Perhaps in time, his sparks of poetic brilliance will be a part of a great literary fire indeed.
Rating:
Summary: A Casual Match in a Very Dry Field
Review: Billy Collins didn't publish his poems in book form until after he was forty. Despite this fact, he became Poet Laurette for the United States from 2001-2003 (and he may be again, for all we know). There are plenty of people who like to dismiss his writing as simple, or who will say that it deals with bland subjects. I am not one of those people. From the first full poem, "The Country," Collins generates words that count more and more as the book goes on. He can titilate a reader's sense of fancy, as he does in "The Country," or create a moment of true wonder about the lives of people outside a reader's world, as he does in the bathhouses of "Istanbul." He doesn't waste words, and I for one was thankful for that mark of respect. He values his reader because he writes the poems in "Nine Horses" with clarity and precision, and yet maintains an easy grace as he moves from line to line. In "Litany," Collins turns the idea of poetic imagery on itself with sparkling joviality, and it is easy to see why such poems have entered the popular mind so quickly. A personal favorite is "Tipping Point," which asks the question, When does life's wave crest to become an ebbing and not a flowing? No matter which poem I read, however, I couldn't wait to get to the next one. Collins is a modern talent, who is bringing poetry to the forefront of popular literature again (no, it never really went away, of course, but without poets like Collins, it might). I respect him because he, as a writer, respects his reader. I like his words because, well, they are fine words. Perhaps in time, his sparks of poetic brilliance will be a part of a great literary fire indeed.
Rating:
Summary: be thankful, i suppose
Review: Billy Collins has managed to put beautifully into words some of the most basic and wonderful human quirks. in "Aimless Love," for instance, he describes a warm sort of romance in all things, including what might seem very insignificant. the soap in a dish, for example--it's amazing how he turns it into something magical, so much that one almost wants a little piece of soap of their own to love. it doesn't end there. the words create a little current and float you gently along, sometimes startlingly frank and almost always right on the mark. i'd be glad to recommend this to anyone interested in a quiet sunday afternoon read. a caveat, though: this isn't the type of poetry that wilde or the immortal yeats wrote. i myself an a die-hard fan of the lyric poem. this is a new breed, a style more like that of paragraphs broken up into stanzas. there isn't any of the "ABAB, CDCD" that you might have been taught in school. Collins' approach is certainly modern. so be thankful, i suppose, that while the more classical poetry is being phased out, at least there are works like "Nine Horses" to take its place.
Rating:
Summary: Sailing around the room again.
Review: Billy Collins has previously published six collections of poetry. This is not only his first volume of new poetry since PICNIC, LIGHTNING in 1998, but his first book of new poetry since his appointment as the Poet Laureate of the United States (2001-2003). While some readers new to Collins may read him because of his impressive credentials, I will always return to him hoping to experience a quirky poet sailing around the room, once again, with a Buddhist's eye for finding the mystery in the mundane, the small wonders in the ordinary. In the collection's title poem, addressing a photograph on his wall, Collins writes: "Let your suffering eyes/ and your anonymous deaths/ be the bridle that keeps us from straying from each other/ be the cinch that fastens us to the belly of each day/ as it gallops away, hooves sparking into the night" (p. 65). In another poem, we find him revisiting the familiar subject of his insomnia, standing outside in his pajamas, on the wet grass with his dog, comparing the moon to Shakespeare's famous forehead (pp. 5-6). And whether he is meditating on a noisy bird from his warm, soapy bath in Paris (pp. 23-5), or contemplating a clean, white shirt, a wren's nest, a dead mouse (pp. 17-8), asparagus (pp. 47-8), roadkill (p. 41-2), roadside flowers (p. 43-4 ), obituaries (pp. 33-5), or the poetry of William Carlos Williams (pp. 71-2), or whether we find him with a Bee Gees' song playing uncontrollably in his head (pp. 14-6), Collins succeeds again in these poems at revealing the small wonders of this "vast and speckled" world, "so full of ink and sorrow" (p. 62). Always finding the extraordinary in familiar territory, this collection of 51 new poems from our Poet Laureate was worth the wait. G. Merritt
Rating:
Summary: this is why he is laureate
Review: Billy Collins is the everyman's poet. Regardless of whether or not he'll be remembered a hundred years from now, and regardless of some people's opinion of the content of his verse, he is a good poet. He is one of the few who successfully use humor in his poems. His poems are easy to understand, but still have a literary backing to them. You don't have to have a doctorate in English to understand what he writes, but you can tell Collins is intelligent and well-read. You find yourself chuckling at some poems, and many times wishing you had come up with a phrase or an idea he uses. Read this collection (or his new and selected) and you'll understand why he has the popularity he does.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing to Say
Review: Billy Collins is the only poet I know that writes about doing nothing. With his newest collection, we find Billy looking out the window, staring at a water stain on a ceiling, watching clouds change into animals in the sky, and so on. In "Bermuda," Collins writes: "we come about as close/as a man and a woman can/to doing nothing." Is all this supposed to be amusing? Enlightening? With "Nine Horses," it becomes painfully obvious that our Poet Laureate has nothing to say, but says it anyway.
Rating:
Summary: Finally!
Review: How bold it would be to be critical of a man who is Poet Laureate of the United States. Fortunately, I don't have a lot of criticisms to make. I have been a Collins fan for some time, having come across a poem of his in Poetry magazine and then reading his collection Questions About Angels. I've been reading his stuff ever since. I've never read a poet who keeps me enthralled on every page and Collins is no exception; however, there is a lot of good stuff here. "Night Letter to the Reader," "The Country," "Velocity," "Istanbul," "Love," "Creatures," "Birthday," "Albany," "Litany," "Bermuda" and "The Only Day in Existence" are among my favorites. I particularly like a poem called "Tipping Point" where Collins brings out the arbitrariness of measuring time and the subtlety of our sensations of time: "...the sensation you might feel/as you passed through the moment//at the exact center of your life/or as you crossed the equator at night in a boat." Would we want to be able to sense the midpoint of our lives? Could we? Any more than we could sense passing over the equator?--another arbitrary way to measure our world. And yet, we do sense things deeply, if only in the deep dark night or while walking in the rain. But Collins never dips to far into pretentiousness. In fact, in "Study in Orange and White" he illuminates the pretentiousness of titles. How many of us know that the painting generally referred to as "Whistler's mother" is in fact entitled "Arrangement in Gray and Black"? Then why not, Collins asks, Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" as "Composition is Blue, Ocher, Green, and Pink" or, best of all: "...a chef being roasted on a blazing spit/before an audience of ducks/and calling it ¡¥Study in Orange and White.'" I always enjoy a poet who can bring in some humor because I find this to be a weakness in my own poetry. Ultimately, as you read this poetry, you begin to realize that Collins is never far from you. This is not confessional poetry and yet the pronoun "I" appears in every single poem. But Collins is more of a friendly guide through his poetry than someone who is trying to beat you over the head with his themes. Collins has been compared to Frost and I think there is some truth in this. In this collection, Collins shows his Frost-like skill at presenting poems that are relatively short and very accessible in a surface reading but yield more if you want to put in some effort to dig a little deeper. This is an uncommon skill. Modern poetry is too often neglected in this country today. That is too bad. Here is a collection of poetry that deserves to be read. In these rather short poems, Collins uses his personality and experiences to give his readers a share of those experiences--experiences that are worthwhile.
Rating:
Summary: Personal (Not Confessional) Poetry
Review: How bold it would be to be critical of a man who is Poet Laureate of the United States. Fortunately, I don't have a lot of criticisms to make. I have been a Collins fan for some time, having come across a poem of his in Poetry magazine and then reading his collection Questions About Angels. I've been reading his stuff ever since. I've never read a poet who keeps me enthralled on every page and Collins is no exception; however, there is a lot of good stuff here. "Night Letter to the Reader," "The Country," "Velocity," "Istanbul," "Love," "Creatures," "Birthday," "Albany," "Litany," "Bermuda" and "The Only Day in Existence" are among my favorites. I particularly like a poem called "Tipping Point" where Collins brings out the arbitrariness of measuring time and the subtlety of our sensations of time: "...the sensation you might feel/as you passed through the moment//at the exact center of your life/or as you crossed the equator at night in a boat." Would we want to be able to sense the midpoint of our lives? Could we? Any more than we could sense passing over the equator?--another arbitrary way to measure our world. And yet, we do sense things deeply, if only in the deep dark night or while walking in the rain. But Collins never dips to far into pretentiousness. In fact, in "Study in Orange and White" he illuminates the pretentiousness of titles. How many of us know that the painting generally referred to as "Whistler's mother" is in fact entitled "Arrangement in Gray and Black"? Then why not, Collins asks, Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" as "Composition is Blue, Ocher, Green, and Pink" or, best of all: "...a chef being roasted on a blazing spit/before an audience of ducks/and calling it ¡¥Study in Orange and White.'" I always enjoy a poet who can bring in some humor because I find this to be a weakness in my own poetry. Ultimately, as you read this poetry, you begin to realize that Collins is never far from you. This is not confessional poetry and yet the pronoun "I" appears in every single poem. But Collins is more of a friendly guide through his poetry than someone who is trying to beat you over the head with his themes. Collins has been compared to Frost and I think there is some truth in this. In this collection, Collins shows his Frost-like skill at presenting poems that are relatively short and very accessible in a surface reading but yield more if you want to put in some effort to dig a little deeper. This is an uncommon skill. Modern poetry is too often neglected in this country today. That is too bad. Here is a collection of poetry that deserves to be read. In these rather short poems, Collins uses his personality and experiences to give his readers a share of those experiences--experiences that are worthwhile.
Rating: 
Summary: Inoffensive, yet of little grace
Review: I am not a huge fan of Billy Collins, I have read Picnic, Lighting and enjoy some of its finer moments. Here, as in elsewhere, Collins is an acessible poet, a funny poet, and, in some ways, the ideal popular poet. While is no Joyce Klimer, he is also not Charles Simic, not Anne Sexton, not Creely, and most definitely not a Charles Olson. Nine Horses is sentimental and essentially bloodless. Here Collins seems to let the subtle sublime of some of his earlier work slip more firmly into the realm of merely clever. As Collin's popularity increases he becomes poetry's Neal Simmon, or even, its Terry Pratchett. Admirable for moderns of clarity and wit, but ultimately artless. Perhaps, that best represents the taste of modern America. Many may enjoy this book, but I most definitely didn't.
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