Horoscopes for the Dead

by Billy Collins

Overview

WINNER—BEST POETRY—GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
NEWSWEEK/THE DAILY BEAST

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
 
Billy Collins is widely acknowledged as a prominent player at the table of modern American poetry. And in this smart, lyrical, and mischievous collection of poetry, which covers the everlasting themes of love and loss, youth and aging, solitude and union, Collins’s verbal gifts are on full display.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812975628
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/20/2012
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	489,875
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Billy Collins is the author of nine collections of poetry and the editor of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, and Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds. He was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and Poet Laureate of New York State from 2004 to 2006.

Hometown:

Somers, New York

Date of Birth:

March 22, 1941

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

B.A., Holy Cross College, 1963; Ph.D. in Romantic poetry, University of California at Riverside, 1971

Read an Excerpt

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Editorial Reviews

The most companionable of poetic companions.”—The New York Times
 
“Collins continues his penchant for writing witty, companionable verse that’s often rooted in everyday matters.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Collins writes of time and death with humor and whirligig images and wordplay so unexpected and delectable, reading his poetry is like watching a magician transform ordinary objects—a coin, a card—into something breathtaking out of thin air.”—Booklist
 
“This is the poet’s richest work to date.”—Newsday
 
“Beloved, witty, smart, yet accessible.”—St. Petersburg Times
 
“Billy Collins is one of today’s most popular poets, revered for his ability to evoke humor and heartbreak in verses both subtle and sagacious.”—Wisconsin State Journal

From the Publisher

Billy Collins's latest…continues and deepens the exploration of love and mortality that began in his previous collection Ballistics. Yet as readers will quickly notice, Collins's acute awareness of life's limits seems to have softened his tone. His trademark humor, while still present, is subtle, and most of the work is invitingly thoughtful.
—The Washington Post

Elizabeth Lund

The 1990s belonged to Billy Collins in the same way that the 1980s belonged to Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten). Collins's gently ironic, gently elegiac work--the mirror image of, say, Jonathan Franzen's suburban delvings--has slowly constructed a pitch-perfect purgatory, and this death-themed ninth collection seems to want to make it as literal as possible: it opens as the speaker stands "before the joined grave of my parents" and asks, "What do you think of my new glasses?" In a poem titled "Hell," the speaker has "a feeling that is much worse/ than shopping for a mattress in a mall,// of greater duration without question,/ and there is no random pitchforking here,/ no licking flames to fear,/ only this cavernous store with its maze of bedding." That this feeling is never quite articulated over the course of 50-odd poems is not to its detriment: despite the prosaic settings and everyday language, Collins is after the big questions: of life, death, and how to live. But the world is not of his making, and his is a temperament oddly suited to a world where "the correct answer" to questions like why the stars appear as they do, strike "not like a bolt of lightning/ but more like a heavy bolt of cloth." (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

In his ninth book of poems (after Ballistics), Collins recalls a boyhood passion for collecting: "lantern, spyglass, tomahawk...in the order you would need them in," a sweet beginning with ominous implications. And there is a sharp edge to his fabrications in this volume, which begins with a verbal prank at his parents' grave, ends with the last poem he will ever write, and includes a catalog of his unborn children. His Florida is not Paris; his friend does not have cancer, nor is she human; and the dead don't do anything that appears here in their absurd, generic horoscopes (nor would they have even when alive). In the empty lawn chairs, "no one is resting a glass or placing a book facedown," and the most delightful companions are the cemetery dead. As if feeling naughty, the poet lounges poolside and regards a floating rubber version of himself: "a cool ducky, nonchalant/ little dude on permanent vacation." Ultimately, these absorbing games can't deny the fundamental calamity: grief seeps between the cracks. VERDICT Witty bleakness from a former poet laureate and one of the country's most popular poets.—Ellen Kaufman, Baruch Coll., New York

Library Journal

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