Ballistics: Poems - Hardcover

Collins, Billy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400064910 ISBN 13: 9781400064915

Publisher: Random House, 2008

Synopsis

A Billy Collins poem is instantly recognizable. “Using simple, understandable language,” notes USA Today, the two-term U.S. Poet Laureate “captures ordinary life–its pleasure, its discontents, its moments of sadness and of joy.” His everyman approach to writing resonates with readers everywhere and generates fans who would otherwise never give a poem a second glance.

Now, in this stunning new collection, Collins touches on a greater array of subjects–love, death, solitude, youth, and aging–delving deeper than ever before. Ballistics comes at the reader full force with moving and playful takes on life. Drawing inspiration from the world around him and from such poetic forebears as Robert Frost, Paul Valéry, and eleventh-century poet Liu Yung, Collins drolly captures the essence of an ordinary afternoon:

All I do these drawn-out days
is sit in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge
where there are no pheasants to be seen
and, last time I looked, no ridge.

Collins reflects on his solitude:

If I lived across the street from myself
and I was sitting in the dark
on the edge of the bed
at five o’clock in the morning,

I might be wondering what the light
was doing on in my study at this hour.

And he meditates on the effects of love:

It turns everything into a symbol
like a storm that breaks loose
in the final chapter of a long novel.

And it may add sparkle to a morning,
or deepen a night
when the bed is ringed with fire.

As Collins strives to find truth in the smallest detail, readers are given a fascinating, intimate glimpse into the heart and soul of a brilliantly thoughtful man and exemplary poet.

About this title

About the Author

Billy Collins is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Trouble with Poetry, Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. He is also the editor of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. A distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York, he was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and Poet Laureate of New York State from 2004 to 2006.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

August in Paris
 
I have stopped here on the rue des Écoles
just off the boulevard St-Germain
to look over the shoulder of a man
in a flannel shirt and a straw hat
who has set up an easel and a canvas chair
on the sidewalk in order to paint from a droll angle
a side-view of the Church of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
 
But where are you, reader,
who have not paused in your walk
to look over my shoulder
to see what I am jotting in this notebook?
 
Alone in this city,
I sometimes wonder what you look like,
if you are wearing a flannel shirt
or a wraparound blue skirt held together by a pin.
 
But every time I turn around
you have fled through a crease in the air
to a quiet room where the shutters are closed
against the heat of the afternoon,
where there is only the sound of your breathing
and every so often, the turning of a page.
 
 
Brightly Colored Boats Upturned on the Banks of the Charles
 
What is there to say about them
that has not been said in the title?
I saw them near dawn from a glassy room
on the other side of that river,
which flowed from some hidden spring
to the sea; but that is getting away from
the brightly colored boats upturned
on the banks of the Charles,
the sleek racing sculls of a college crew team.
 
They were beautiful in the clear early light—
red, yellow, blue and green—
is all I wanted to say about them,
although for the rest of the day
I pictured a lighter version of myself
calling time through a little megaphone,
first to the months of the year,
then to the twelve apostles, all grimacing
as they leaned and pulled on the long wooden oars.
 
 
 
Searching
 
I recall someone once admitting
that all he remembered of Anna Karenina
was something about a picnic basket,
 
and now, after consuming a book
devoted to the subject of Barcelona—
its people, its history, its complex architecture—
 
all I remember is the mention
of an albino gorilla, the inhabitant of a park
where the Citadel of the Bourbons once stood.
 
The sheer paleness of her looms over
all the notable names and dates
as the evening strollers stop before her
 
and point to show their children.
These locals called her Snowflake,
and here she has been mentioned again in print
 
in the hope of keeping her pallid flame alive
and helping her, despite her name, to endure
in this poem where she has found another cage.
 
Oh, Snowflake,
I had no interest in the capital of Catalonia—
its people, its history, its complex architecture—
 
no, you were the reason
I kept my light on late into the night
turning all those pages, searching for you everywhere.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1400064910
• ISBN 13: 9781400064915
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128