The trouble with poetry and other poems
/ Billy Collins
- 1st ed
- New York : Random House , c2005.
- 88 p. ; 22 cm.
"The birds are in their trees,/ the toast is in the toaster,/ and the poets are at their windows." As implied by this line-and the book's very title-a major concern of Collins's new collection is the art, the craft, of poetry. As the former poet laureate enters his seventh decade ("Because tomorrow/ I will turn 420 in dog years,"), it is an appropriate time, perhaps, for him to reflect on his aesthetics, on the seemingly casual, natural, sure steps that brought about his poems: "The other day as I was ricocheting slowly/ off the pale blue walls of this room/ bouncing from typewriter to piano,/ from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor." Collins is as close as anyone in contemporary American poetry will likely get to being a household name. Blame his sweet, smart, and wise poems, which are always accessible; his colorful personality and ungoverned humor; or his remarkable energy-it is, no doubt, a combination of all these things. "The trouble with poetry," he suggests, "is that it encourages the writing of more poetry," and this collection is as rich and mischievous as anything he has given us previously.