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Title details for Water, Water by Billy Collins - Wait list

Water, Water

Poems

by Billy Collins
ebook
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0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 8 weeks
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the former Poet Laureate of the United States and New York Times bestselling author of Aimless Love comes a wondrous new collection of poems focused on the joys and mysteries of daily life.
“Among the best poems that [Billy] Collins has ever written.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR
“Witty, wry and tender when it hurts, Water, Water is a pleasure to read and easy to give.”—The Washington Post
“Collins remains the most companionable of poetic companions.”—The New York Times

One of People’s Best New Books
In this collection of sixty new poems, Billy Collins writes about the beauties and ironies of everyday experience. A poem is best, he feels, when it begins in clarity but ends with a whiff of mystery.
In Water, Water, Collins combines his vigilant attention and respect for the peripheral to create moments of delight. Common and uncommon events are captured here with equal fascination, be it a cat leaning to drink from a swimming pool, a nurse calling a name in a waiting room, or an astronaut reciting Emily Dickinson from outer space. With his trademark lyrical informality, Collins asks us to slow down and glimpse the elevated in the ordinary, the odd in the familiar. It’s no surprise that The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal both call Collins one of America’s favorite poets.
The Monet Conundrum
Is every one of these poems
different from the others
he asked himself,
as the rain quieted down,
or are they all the same poem,
haystack after haystack
at different times of day,
different shadows and shades of hay?

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 19, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780593731031

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780593731031
      • File size: 558 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Booklist

      November 1, 2024
      Reading Collins (Musical Tables, 2022) is like entering a decompression chamber in which oxygen takes the form of wittily concentrated poems that engender a feeling of well-being, healing, and recalibration. Collins' unassuming yet piercing lyrics are vignettes of everyday moments charged with wonder, bemusement, and, at times, rage. Anything can spark the poet's philosophical and comedic imagination, as well as delight in both beauty and the absurd: a crow on a fence post, the alphabet, "three lemons doing nothing in a bowl." Paging through a guest book at "a cottage in the woods by a lake" reveals a spectrum of human impulses both hilarious and touching. Collins muses about time and change, picturing a poem being "written / in a 12th-century monastic scriptorium," then declaring his love for "the science fiction of my 21st-century life / even with all the dying around me." The title poem also alludes to planetary disaster, but Collins finds humor and solace in a quiet morning, a cardinal, a lake. Ever-inventive and evergreen, Collins is a warm, self- deprecating, and enrapturing poet of surprising pivots, unforeseen connections, and astute hijinks.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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