Water, Water: Poems

by Billy Collins

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

There is beauty in the mundane — Billy Collins reminds us we just need to remember to look for it. Indoors, outdoors and beyond, this collection is an ode to the wild and weird world around us.

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.

"[Billy] Collins remains the most companionable of poetic companions."—The New York Times

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?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593731024
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/19/2024
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	22,248
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.70(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Billy Collins is a former Poet Laureate of the United States. He is the author of twelve collections of poetry, including the bestsellers Aimless Love, The Trouble with Poetry, and Sailing Alone Around the Room. He is also the editor of Poetry 180, 180 More, and Bright Wings. A former Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, Collins also served as New York State Poet. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Florida with his wife, Suzannah.

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

Fire

I’m having a swell time reading Lonesome Dove,
glad I still have 400 pages to go,
but this paperback is one of a thousand things around me
I would not grab as I dashed into the street if the house ever decided to burst into flames.

I probably couldn’t find the cat for all the smoke filling every room,
so let me see, give me a minute . . .

I should have thought of this earlier before the fire trucks arrived and men in helmets were rushing past me.

But here I am out on the lawn in a bathrobe with a few sleepy neighbors,
red lights flashing all over us.
I’m holding a photograph to my chest and the cat is sitting next to me,
apparently mesmerized by the flames.

I’m happy with my choice as I look down at you and me in a frame.
Here’s a chance for a fresh start, I figure.
And as for the ashes of Lonesome Dove,
I can always get another copy, or maybe that’s just where I was meant to stop reading.


Marijuana

When I was young and dreamy,
I longed to be a poet,
not one with his arms wrapped around the universe or on his knees before a goddess,
not waving from Mount Parnassus nor wearing a cape like Lord Byron,
rather just reporting on a dog or an orange.

But one soft night in California
I walked outside during a party,
lay down on the lawn beneath a lively sky,
and after an interlude of nonstop gazing,
I happened to swallow the moon,
yes, I opened my mouth in awe and swallowed the full moon whole.

And the moon dwelled within me when I returned to the lights of the party,
where I was welcomed back with understanding and hilarity and was recognized long into the night as The Man Who Swallowed the Moon,
he who had walked out of a storybook and was dancing now with a girl in the kitchen.


Ode to Joy

Friedrich Schiller called Joy the spark of divinity,
but she visits me on a regular basis,
and it doesn’t take much for her to appear—
the salt next to the pepper by the stove,
the garbage man ascending his station on the back of the moving garbage truck,
or I’m just eating a banana in the car and listening to Buddy Guy.

In other words, she seems down to earth,
like a girl getting off a bus with a suitcase and no one’s there to meet her.
It’s a little after 4 in the afternoon,
one of the first warm days of spring.
She sits on her suitcase to wait and slides on her sunglasses.
How do I know she’s listening to the birds?