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The Trouble With Poetry And Other Poems
Billy Collins
Hardcover, 85 pages; 2005 and Paperback, 112 pages; 2007 (2005)
 Members' Price (UB1812): $11.86
I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you——not one bit.
In "The Revenant" (excerpted above), Billy Collins goes on to write about all the things the spirit-dog hated about his late life with his master: "the car, the rubber toys…your friends and, worse, your relatives." All amusing, simple stuff. But the ending lines report back from the beyond that "everyone here can read and write, the dogs in poetry, the cats and all the others in prose." Not so simple. And that's the joy of Billy Collins, U. S. Poet Laureate Emeritus: his poetry is accessible and yet philosophical--filled with joy and sorrow; both in the moment and resonating with memory. In the title poem, the last in this anthology, Collins concludes that "the trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry." Of poetry like that of Collins's, more is better.
(EE)
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