Billy Collins

Nine Horses, Billy Collins’s first book of new poems since Picnic, Lightning in 1998, is the latest curve in the phenomenal trajectory of this poet’s career. Already in his forties when he debuted with a full-length book, The Apple That Astonished Paris, Collins has become the first poet since Robert Frost to combine high critical acclaim with broad popular appeal. And, as if to crown this success, he was appointed...

Billy Collins’ use of humor is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of his poetry.  In this benefit performance for WNYC, comedian Bill Murray begins the evening with a delightfully witty introduction and an homage to the former Poet Laureate.
In a performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City on April 20, 2005, Billy Collins shared 24 of his poems. In addition to the readings, Collins also spent some time...

Playfulness, spare elegance, and wit epitomize the poetry of Billy Collins. With his distinct voice and accessible language, America’s two-term Poet Laureate has opened the door to poetry for countless people for whom it might otherwise remain closed.
Like the present book’s title, Collins’s poems are filled with mischief, humor, and irony, “Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, but here I would like to address...

""America's favorite poet" (the Wall Street Journal) has found a new form for his unique poetic style: the small poem. Here Collins writes about his trademark themes of nature, animals, poetry, mortality, absurdity, and love--all in a handful of lines. Neither Haiku nor limmerick, and certainly not a gimmick, the small poem pushes to an extreme poetry's famed power to condense emotional and conceptual content into small spaces. Taken together the...

Presents a volume of more than fifty new poems accompanied by a generous gathering from the author's collections of the past decade, lending insight into his overall poetic achievements and his use of playful, ironic, and melodic language

Come full circle with 180 new, exciting poems selected and introduced by Billy Collins. Inspired by Billy Collins's poem-a-day program for American high schools that he began through the Library of Congress, the original Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry was a gathering of clear, contemporary poems aimed at a wide audience. In 180 More, Collins continues his ambitious mission of exposing readers of all ages to the best of today's poetry. Like its...

In this beautiful collection of poems and paintings, Billy Collins, former U.S. poet laureate, joins with David Allen Sibley, America's foremost bird illustrator, to celebrate the winged creatures that have inspired so many poets to sing for centuries. From Catullus and Chaucer to Robert Browning and James Wright, poets have long treated birds as powerful metaphors for beauty, escape, transcendence, and divine expression.Here, in this substantial...