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Title: Questions About Angels (Pitt Poetry Series) by Billy Collins ISBN: 0-8229-5698-5 Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: March, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Skeleton at a Typewriter
Comment: "I suppose I might be different from previous poet laureates by kind of emphasizing the playful or even screwball aspects of poetry." ~Billy Collins
Poetry can increase our capacity for viewing the world as a colorful, imaginative landscape of crisp words and vibrant images. In "Questions About Angels," Billy Collins presents the world in an almost animated fashion. At times his words glide across your mind like slow moving images in a movie or a long sweep of a lens. At other times, the "movie" is highly animated and takes on bizarre characteristics.
The first few poems flew by my mind. I was aware of the content of the poems, they were observations, memories of childhood. However, it wasn't until I reached "Reading Myself to Sleep" that I made a connection. While I had enjoyed the endings of the first few poems, suddenly, I was relating to emotions and images I had experienced.
"Is there a more gentle way to go into the night
than to follow an endless rope of sentences
and then slip drowsily under the surface of a page"
Then, I started to notice a unique imaginative twist to many of the poems and even an occasional tendency towards the macabre in "Purity." Billy Collins seems to see himself in an animated world where the laws of life and death don't always apply. While "Purity" is rather comical and shows a tongue-in-cheek attitude to the freedom he might be experiencing in his writing, "The Wires of the Night" is a solemn animation of death. While the skeleton in "Purity" is free, "Death" soaks itself into the poets mind and seems to present an instability and then a calm release from thought.
I had to smile while reading "Wolf" because it was just rather cute. We find a wolf reading a fairy tale and later in the evening he is found knocking over houses with his breath. I am sure this poem has a much deeper meaning. Devouring words and then acting upon them or perhaps words setting us into action or leading us to our fate.
While Billy Collins often seems to paint cartoons on the canvas of our minds ("Love in the Sahara" where a camel leaves a pack of cigarettes was rather comical) with a magical twist, the moment of brilliance, for me at least, was on page 70. He is describing himself as the New York Public Library.
"I would feel the pages of books turning inside me like butterflies."
What more can I say? This book lover has been charmed.
~TheRebeccaReview.com
Rating: 5
Summary: Should be Required Reading for jaded citizens
Comment: Several weeks ago I first discovered Billy Collins. A newspaper article had a quotation where he discussed the fact that he uses subjects and predicates when writing poetry. This peculiar poetic quirk led me to go online to discover that poetry. There I found the poem "Nostalgia", which is included in this book.
I read it, enjoyed it, passed it on to friends. Then a strange thing happened - lines from Nostalgia kept cropping up in my memory. Each time it happened, I gained a deeper respect for the poem. I read and reread my cut-and-paste copy of Nostalgia. Finally, the only possible result occurred - I bought the book that contained it. A book filled with similar marvels.
Reviewers far more renowned that I have already given incredible praise to Billy Collin's work. I'm a pretty ordinary person. I've never studied so that I know all the "proper" elements of a poem. So what can I add that hasn't already been said? I can add that Billy Collins reaches people like me. He takes our ordinary, everyday experiences and looks at them with magic eyes. He sees - and says - the things we all want to feel about life and its infinite possibilities.
Above all, he makes me feel good about my life and my world. I urge you to explore the Collins world - to get that same surge of energy that I have experienced.
Rating: 5
Summary: Billy Collins: Arbitrator of the ordinary
Comment: Billy Collins, in musing to himself, and recording what he thinks about ordinary objects and surroundings, draws us into the process of poetry in an extraordinarily reassuring way, as if to say, "See, it's a marvel, but it's not so difficult to open up a new dimension. Just follow the train of your intelligent mind, and let us in on it!" This kind of poetry is what ordinary Americans need in a poet laureate--accessible, but opening new windows to the world of thought and feeling.
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Title: Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins ISBN: 0375755195 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Art of Drowning (Pitt Poetry Series (Paper)) by Billy Collins ISBN: 0822955679 Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: July, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Picnic, Lightning (Pitt Poetry Series (Paper)) by Billy Collins ISBN: 0822956705 Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr Pub. Date: March, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Nine Horses : Poems by Billy Collins ISBN: 0375503811 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: The Apple That Astonished Paris: Poems by Billy Collins by Billy Collins ISBN: 155728024X Publisher: Univ of Arkansas Pr Pub. Date: September, 1988 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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