The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins

Praise for
The Trouble with Poetry
    “Clever, subtle and engaging … offer[ing] moments of sweetness, truth and easy humor.”
    —
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
    “In his latest collection … Collins demonstrates why he is one of our best poets, with his appealing trademark style: a self-deprecating charm, playful wit and unexpected imaginative leaps.… [He] is adept at the perfect, shimmering phrase.… With an easy nonchalance and deceptive simplicity, [he] explores our world.… Sit back and enjoy this ride with Collins at the wheel.”
    —
San Antonio Express-News
    “[Collins] moves you to laughter and tears, often during the course of one poem.… His insight into the human condition astonishes.”
    —
Pages
    “Billy Collins is the Oprah of poetry.… By careful observation, Collins spins comic gold from the dross of quotidian suburban life.… Chipping away at the surface, he surprises you by scraping to the wood underneath, to some deeper truth.”
    —
Entertainment Weekly
    “Collins’s accessible and deeply human poetry would make a poetry lover out of anyone.”
    —
Good Housekeeping
    “[This] new collection by Collins … should bolster his standing as America’s most popular poet. All the poems in
The Trouble with Poetry
are accessible and thoughtful, many are funny, and worth reading aloud.… [His poems contain] a kind of frank optimism or benevolence that is … simply warm and human.”
    —
Virginia Quarterly
    “Collins is as close as anyone in contemporary American poetry will likely get to being a household name. Blame his sweet, smart, and wise poems … his colorful personality and ungoverned humor; or his remarkable energy.… This collection is as rich and mischievous as anything he has given us previously. Highly recommended.”
    —
Library Journal
    “Disarming … and devastatingly funny … Skeptical of love and scornful of pretension, Collins is breathtaking in his appreciation of the earth’s beauty and the precious daily routines that define life.”
    —
Booklist
    “Collins has a firm grasp of his art and craft.… If he gives a reading near you, by all means go. You might just get hooked on poetry.”
    —The
Washington Times
    “Charming … With his wit and plainspokenness, Collins is a likeable successor to Robert Frost.”
    —Cleveland
Plain Dealer
    “You will find yourself reading the poems out loud, smiling and reading them again, sharing them with a friend. The perfect holiday or houseguest present for the friend who loves poetry—or who has yet to discover its joys and rewards.”
    —Taconic
Newspapers
    “[Collins’s] comic gifts … his light touch, his self-deprecating pathos and his unerring sense of his audience … remain evident in this eighth collection.”
    —
Publishers Weekly
    “Stuns with simple language … Collins is by turns insightful, sensitive and, always, witty.”
    —
The Advocate
    “The perfect gift for someone who loves poetry or, for that matter, hates it.… Collins’ poems speak a language accessible to all and are filled with wit, wisdom and humor.”
    —
Acadiana LifeStyle

Also by Billy Collins
    Nine Horses

Sailing Alone Around the Room

Picnic, Lightning

The Art of Drowning

Questions About Angels

Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry
(editor)
180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day
(editor)



2007 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
    Copyright © 2005 by Billy Collins
    All rights reserved.
    Published in the United States by Random House Trade
Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
    R ANDOM H OUSE T RADE P APERBACKS and colophon are
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
    Originally published in hardcover in the United States
by Random House, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2005.
    Previous publication information about some of the poems
contained within this work can be found beginning on this