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stevem0214's review
5.0
I love the poetry of Billy Collins. It is so understandable, and inviting. The simplicity is what makes it beautiful. Often funny and touching at the same time. My favorites from this book are Thesaurus, Fiftieth Birthday Eve, Workshop and The Invention of the Saxophone.
mcipher's review
4.0
I loved some of the poems, some I just loved a few lines, and a couple I didn’t really like. But in the whole, this was a great book of poetry. My favorites are the ones that have a sly wit to them but also capture the mundane perfectly. I like many of the lists, but sometimes they take away from the rest of the poem. Standouts for me were Piano Lessons, Pinup, Man in Space, Reading in a Hammock, Osso Bucco, and Water Table.
lalodragon's review
3.0
This is definitely better Billy than his newer books. I've got seven poems marked to revisit. Others had good ending images. The same problems as the other books pop up-- He'd love to tell you all about his bath-- but are better disguised, surrounded by better images.
kfan's review
Really wanted to like this--I love the way he structures his poems, the rhythms of the lines. They have this easy lilt to them that's just about perfect. But I couldn't get into the actual content of the poems! I kept waiting for an ending, a line, a stanza that would come at my unexpectedly, knock me on my ear, but it never happened. I wanted to be surprised, I wanted to suddenly learn that the subject matter wasn't really the subject matter, but that was not the case here. For me the poems were almost pat, and I guess almost too light, in both senses of the word. I want poetry that looks at darkness and still finds hope, but here it was like we were pretending the darkness doesn't even exist.
(Looking forward to re-reading this in 10 years and discovering how totally wrong I was about this book.)
(Looking forward to re-reading this in 10 years and discovering how totally wrong I was about this book.)