A fascinating and accessible new collection from the former US Poet Laureate
Ballistics
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Book Description
It is no understatement to say that Billy Collins has found poetry a whole new audience across the English-speaking world. No poet writing today insists on such open, direct and courteous engagement with the reader, and no poet has shown the common experience to be such an astonishing and singular one. Collins’ gift is to make the reader believe that everything is unfolding in real time and in living speech; his poetry always has the sheen and vibrancy of the present moment. While Ballistics addresses the most grave and serious of subjects - death and love, solitude and aging - Collins’ light touch and lighter spirit never desert him. Even in his darkest verses, Collins never fails to remind us of the sheer miracle, comedy and strangeness of our simply being here. ‘The teasing, buoyant images in Ballistics are firmly anchored in visions of too-quiet mornings, droplets of water, cold marble and bare light bulbs. But he now writes, more simply and assuredly than he used to, about the flights of imagination that keep melancholy at bay . . . Ballistics glows with the confidence of a writer fully aware of his work’s power to delight’ New York Times
About the Author
Billy Collins has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. A professor of English at Lehman College, he was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2001 to 2003, and Poet Laureate of New York State from 2004 to 2006.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you already know Billy Collins's work, then you won't be disappointed by Ballistics. I've read most of his published poetry to date, but have read it as a poetaster rather than as a literary critic. So I'm not getting down to heavy criticism here, I'm just saying that it has his characteristic voice you'll have come to know and love if you are one of his regular readers. While his work is ruminative it also has warmth and particularly humour. There is a gentle, playful, teasing that goes on in his work. It helps to have a fairly literary or artistic background to read him, since he is a very educated poet. But it's not essential, I'd reckon, as one of his key characteristics is his ease of access. The poems have an inviting surface clarity. You won't bounce off the surface of an impenetrable text when you're reading him, as with some modern poetries. His lexicon and syntax make his poems initially open to all or most readers. So you feel you "understand" the poem on first acquaintance. But don't be fooled. Many of these poems are much cleverer, more intelligent, playfully witty, than you might first think. Don't be put off by that suggestion. Just read the poems and see. Reading Billy Collins is like eating ice-cream. You just keep wanting more.
By F. J. Court
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
No wonder Billy Collins is the USA's best loved poet. No bleeding heart romantic, no metaphysical rubbish, just good poetry, seeing the odd and unusual in everyday experiences! Favourite poems are probably 'Ornithography' and the 'Idea of Natural History at Key West'. Unfortunately only 110 pages long, but worth every penny, am now reading it again. Try 'Horoscopes for the dead' and 'Questions about angels' which are equally as good
By L. Mctaggart
Format:Paperback
All that you would expect from Billy Collins: urbane and witty. He writes his poems from (to quote himself in 'August in Paris') a droll angle. Very droll indeed. You never come away from reading a poem of his feeling disappointed, or feeling you've been done. He seems to take quite an innocuous beginning sentence and see how far he can 'run' with it - fortunately for us, he's a marathon man!
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