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“Billy Collins puts the ‘fun’ back in ‘profundity.’ ”—Alice Fulton
From the two-term Poet Laureate of the United States Billy Collins comes his first compilation of new and selected poems in twelve years. Aimless Love combines new poems with selections from four previous books—Nine Horses, The Trouble with Poetry, Ballistics, and Horoscopes for the Dead. Collins’s unmistakable voice, which brings together plain speech with imaginative surprise, is clearly heard with every word, reminding us how he has managed to enrich the tapestry of contemporary poetry and greatly expand its audience. His work is featured in top literary magazines such as The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Atlantic, and he sells out reading venues all across the country. Appearing regularly in The Best American Poetry series, his poems appeal to readers and live audiences far and wide and have been translated into more than a dozen languages. By turns playful, ironic, and serious, Collins’s poetry captures the nuances of everyday life while leading the reader into zones of inspired wonder. In the poet’s own words, he hopes that his poems “begin in Kansas and end in Oz.” Touching on the themes of love, loss, joy, and poetry itself, these poems showcase the best work of this “poet of plenitude, irony, and Augustan grace” (The New Yorker).
Envoy
Go, little book,
out of this house and into the world,
carriage made of paper rolling toward town
bearing a single passenger
beyond the reach of this jittery pen
and far from the desk and the nosy gooseneck lamp.
It is time to decamp,
put on a jacket and venture outside,
time to be regarded by other eyes,
bound to be held in foreign hands.
So off you go, infants of the brain,
with a wave and some bits of fatherly advice:
stay out as late as you like,
don’t bother to call or write,
and talk to as many strangers as you can.
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Creators
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Awards
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Release date
October 22, 2013 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780385366427
- File size: 40747 KB
- Duration: 01:24:53
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Authors are not always the best readers of their work, but Billy Collins is the closest we have to a superstar American poet whose voice and readings are familiar from "A Prairie Home Companion." His dry, almost flat, delivery plays against and strengthens the humor that infuses even his most serious poems. He emphasizes the line breaks (as too many poets fail to do) without disrupting the syntax. Hearing the author's own ideas of how these poems should sound helps us to understand his intentions, as well as Collins's (much underrated) use of imagery. Listeners may find themselves pausing between poems to give themselves a chance to think about each one before starting the next. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine -
November 25, 2013
Two-term Poet Laureate Collins offers up this compilation of poems from the chapbooks he published over the last 12 years. Collins has a clear, plainspoken voice that makes for an easy, even relaxing, listening experience. At the same time, the poems he’s collected here are often biting. In “High,” Collins mentions how one October morning he (or his narrator) is “only behind a double espresso /and a single hit of anti-depressant,” yet feels like he’s “walking with Jane Austen /to borrow the jargon of the streets.” Collins narrates this poem—and indeed many others—with a sort of dry amusement. Or take “A Dog on His Master,” which is both poignant and funny (it is, after all, written from a dog’s point of view): “As young as I look, /I am growing older faster than he... I will pass him one day /and take the lead /the way I do on our walks in the woods.” It’s a sparse, beautiful poem, and its power builds gradually through the last stanza, where Collins slows the pace of his reading to allow listeners can ruminate on his final lines. Overall, Collins does a solid and sometimes transcendent job reading his own work. A Random House hardcover.
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