Maureen Corrigan

Sometimes I do believe there is a book god who sends the book I need when I need it. This week, the book god sent a special delivery of not one, but two much-needed books. For years, Billy Collins has been both blessed and burdened with the tagline that identifies him as one of America's favorite poets.

Sometimes I do believe there is a book god who sends the book I need when I need it. This week, the book god sent a special delivery of not one, but two much-needed books. For years, Billy Collins has been both blessed and burdened with the tagline that identifies him as one of America's favorite poets.

Sometimes I do believe there is a book god who sends the book I need when I need it. This week, the book god sent a special delivery of not one, but two much-needed books. For years, Billy Collins has been both blessed and burdened with the tagline that identifies him as one of America's favorite poets.

I say burdened because if a poet is popular, the suspicion arises that they're a mere rhymester, a step or two up from a hallmark assembly line troubadour. Even at this late stage in Colin's career, he's in his early 80s now, has served as poet laureate, and has published 12 earlier collections of poetry. His simplicity of language invites cynics to regard him as simplistic.

I say burdened because if a poet is popular, the suspicion arises that they're a mere rhymester, a step or two up from a hallmark assembly line troubadour. Even at this late stage in Colin's career, he's in his early 80s now, has served as poet laureate, and has published 12 earlier collections of poetry. His simplicity of language invites cynics to regard him as simplistic.

I say burdened because if a poet is popular, the suspicion arises that they're a mere rhymester, a step or two up from a hallmark assembly line troubadour. Even at this late stage in Colin's career, he's in his early 80s now, has served as poet laureate, and has published 12 earlier collections of poetry. His simplicity of language invites cynics to regard him as simplistic.

Those of us who've long read his work know better. Water, Water, Collins' collection of 60 new poems, takes its title from the romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ballad, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and its often misquoted lines, Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.

Those of us who've long read his work know better. Water, Water, Collins' collection of 60 new poems, takes its title from the romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ballad, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and its often misquoted lines, Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.

Those of us who've long read his work know better. Water, Water, Collins' collection of 60 new poems, takes its title from the romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ballad, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and its often misquoted lines, Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.

Coleridge is also the guy who talked about making the familiar strange and the strange familiar, which is an apt description of what Collins has always done in his own work. If anything has shifted in Collins' poems over the years, it's that the theme of aging is more prevalent, specifically the way aging makes a person estranged from their former selves and others.

Coleridge is also the guy who talked about making the familiar strange and the strange familiar, which is an apt description of what Collins has always done in his own work. If anything has shifted in Collins' poems over the years, it's that the theme of aging is more prevalent, specifically the way aging makes a person estranged from their former selves and others.

Coleridge is also the guy who talked about making the familiar strange and the strange familiar, which is an apt description of what Collins has always done in his own work. If anything has shifted in Collins' poems over the years, it's that the theme of aging is more prevalent, specifically the way aging makes a person estranged from their former selves and others.

Take the poem called When a Man Loves Something. Like most of Collins' work, it appears to be autobiographical, narrated in what Collins himself drolly calls the first-person selfish point of view. Collins starts out remembering a night when he heard the blues singer Percy Sledge perform in a roadhouse on the edge of a California desert. A loopy interlude follows.

Take the poem called When a Man Loves Something. Like most of Collins' work, it appears to be autobiographical, narrated in what Collins himself drolly calls the first-person selfish point of view. Collins starts out remembering a night when he heard the blues singer Percy Sledge perform in a roadhouse on the edge of a California desert. A loopy interlude follows.

Take the poem called When a Man Loves Something. Like most of Collins' work, it appears to be autobiographical, narrated in what Collins himself drolly calls the first-person selfish point of view. Collins starts out remembering a night when he heard the blues singer Percy Sledge perform in a roadhouse on the edge of a California desert. A loopy interlude follows.

Years later, Collins says, when I lived in Florida, we had a plumber whose name was Lynn Hammer. I like to introduce people to one another, but Lynn Hammer said he had never heard of Percy Sledge and put his head back under the sink. So many miscues like that these days. Near the poem's end, Collins imagines there's a planet called the past, and he's on it, orbiting the sun.

Years later, Collins says, when I lived in Florida, we had a plumber whose name was Lynn Hammer. I like to introduce people to one another, but Lynn Hammer said he had never heard of Percy Sledge and put his head back under the sink. So many miscues like that these days. Near the poem's end, Collins imagines there's a planet called the past, and he's on it, orbiting the sun.

Years later, Collins says, when I lived in Florida, we had a plumber whose name was Lynn Hammer. I like to introduce people to one another, but Lynn Hammer said he had never heard of Percy Sledge and put his head back under the sink. So many miscues like that these days. Near the poem's end, Collins imagines there's a planet called the past, and he's on it, orbiting the sun.

Collins is his own most eloquent critic. In a poem bearing the stripped-down title of Your Poem, he suggests that one of the go-to emotions in his work is buoyant ease in the shadow of mortality.

Collins is his own most eloquent critic. In a poem bearing the stripped-down title of Your Poem, he suggests that one of the go-to emotions in his work is buoyant ease in the shadow of mortality.