The Trouble with Poetry

August 15, 2005
Two years after his very visible stint as U.S. poet laureate, Collins (Sailing Alone Around the Room
) remains one of the nation's most popular poets. His light touch, his self-deprecating pathos and his unerring sense of his audience (nothing too difficult, but nothing too lowbrow) explain much of that popularity and remain evident in this eighth collection. "The birds are in their trees,/ the toast is in the toaster,/ and the poets are at their windows," the volume begins: the poet as sensitive everyman, moved if not baffled by literary legacies, and attracted to simple pleasures, constructs a series of similar days and scenes. "In the Moment" depicts "a day in June," "the kind that gives you no choice/ but to unbutton your shirt/ and sit outside in a rough wooden chair"; "I Ask You" opens on "an ordinary night at the kitchen table." Collins's comic gifts are also much in evidence: "Special Glasses" describes spectacles that "filter out the harmful sight of you"; "The Introduction" makes fun of footnotes and obscurities in other poets' poems. The dominant note, however, is a gentle sadness, accomplished with care and skill, sometimes (as in "The Lanyard") garnished by autobiographical wisdom.

October 15, 2005
-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. Highly recommended." -LouisMcKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia"

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2005
Collins is one of the most popular and most disarming of poets. He draws you close with his swinging lines, twirling metaphors, homey imagery, and coy self-deprecation. But he is as likely to be hiding a cudgel behind his back as a bouquet of flowers. How fitting it is that in "Theme," a suavely disconsolate poem, he tips his hat to Cole Porter and the great composer's "put-on nonchalance." Porter's wry and clever style is Collins' style, too, and he uses it with mastery and purpose in easily consumed and devastatingly funny poems in which he shares his discernment of the wonder and torment of life, the terror and banality of death. In meditative poems blissfully free of labored allusions, Collins detects the metaphysical dimension of a hot shower or a glass of iced tea, even as he writes candidly about how difficult it is to control the unruly mind. Skeptical of love and scornful of pretension, Collins is breathtaking in his appreciation of the earth's beauty and the precious daily routines that define life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)