Aimless Love: A Selection of Poems

by Billy Collins Narrated by Billy Collins

Overview

DIGITAL EXCLUSIVE: Includes 5 additional poems only available on the digital download.

“Billy Collins puts the `fun' back in `profundity.' ”-Alice Fulton

From the two-term Poet Laureate of the United States Billy Collins comes his first compilation of new and selected poems in twelve years. Aimless Love combines new poems with selections from four previous books-Nine Horses, The Trouble with Poetry, Ballistics, and Horoscopes for the Dead. Collins's unmistakable voice, which brings together plain speech with imaginative surprise, is clearly heard with every word, reminding us how he has managed to enrich the tapestry of contemporary poetry and greatly expand its audience. His work is featured in top literary magazines such as The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Atlantic, and he sells out reading venues all across the country. Appearing regularly in The Best American Poetry series, his poems appeal to readers and live audiences far and wide and have been translated into more than a dozen languages. By turns playful, ironic, and serious, Collins's poetry captures the nuances of everyday life while leading the reader into zones of inspired wonder. In the poet's own words, he hopes that his poems “begin in Kansas and end in Oz.” Touching on the themes of love, loss, joy, and poetry itself, these poems showcase the best work of this “poet of plenitude, irony, and Augustan grace” (The New Yorker).

Envoy
*
Go, little book,
out of this house and into the world,
*
carriage made of paper rolling toward town
bearing a single passenger
beyond the reach of this jittery pen
and far from the desk and the nosy gooseneck lamp.
*
It is time to decamp,
put on a jacket and venture outside,
time to be regarded by other eyes,
bound to be held in foreign hands.
*
So off you go, infants of the brain,
with a wave and some bits of fatherly advice:
*
stay out as late as you like,
don't bother to call or write,
and talk to as many strangers as you can.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Audio

11/25/2013
Two-term Poet Laureate Collins offers up this compilation of poems from the chapbooks he published over the last 12 years. Collins has a clear, plainspoken voice that makes for an easy, even relaxing, listening experience. At the same time, the poems he’s collected here are often biting. In “High,” Collins mentions how one October morning he (or his narrator) is “only behind a double espresso /and a single hit of anti-depressant,” yet feels like he’s “walking with Jane Austen /to borrow the jargon of the streets.” Collins narrates this poem—and indeed many others—with a sort of dry amusement. Or take “A Dog on His Master,” which is both poignant and funny (it is, after all, written from a dog’s point of view): “As young as I look, /I am growing older faster than he... I will pass him one day /and take the lead /the way I do on our walks in the woods.” It’s a sparse, beautiful poem, and its power builds gradually through the last stanza, where Collins slows the pace of his reading to allow listeners can ruminate on his final lines. Overall, Collins does a solid and sometimes transcendent job reading his own work. A Random House hardcover. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

America’s favorite poet.”—The Wall Street Journal

“[Billy Collins] is able, with precious few words, to make me cry. Or laugh out loud. He is a remarkable artist. To have such power in such an abbreviated form is deeply inspiring.”—J. J. Abrams, The New York Times Book Review
 
“His work is poignant, straightforward, usually funny and imaginative, also nuanced and surprising. It bears repeated reading and reading aloud.”—The Plain Dealer
 
“Collins has earned almost rock-star status. . . . He knows how to write layered, subtly witty poems that anyone can understand and appreciate—even those who don’t normally like poetry. . . . The Collins in these pages is distinctive, evocative, and knows how to make the genre fresh and relevant.”—The Christian Science Monitor
 
“Collins’s new poems contain everything you've come to expect from a Billy Collins poem. They stand solidly on even ground, chiseled and unbreakable. Their phrasing is elegant, the humor is alive, and the speaker continues to stroll at his own pace through the plainness of American life.”—The Daily Beast
 
“[Collins’s] poetry presents simple observations, which create a shared experience between Collins and his readers, while further revealing how he takes life’s everyday humdrum experiences and makes them vibrant.”—The Times Leader
 
“Former poet laureate and reader favorite Collins, the maestro of the running-brook line and the clever pivot, celebrates the resonance and absurdity of what might be called the poet’s attention-surfeit disorder. . . . But Collins’s droll wit is often a diversionary tactic, so that when he strikes you with the hard edge of his darker visions, you reel.”—Booklist

“A stellar jumping-off point . . . a joyride through all layers of his approach from 2002 to the present, which should not only please his current fans, but inspire many others to dive into Mr. Collins’s work, headfirst.”—The Rumpus

MAY 2014 - AudioFile

Authors are not always the best readers of their work, but Billy Collins is the closest we have to a superstar American poet whose voice and readings are familiar from “A Prairie Home Companion.” His dry, almost flat, delivery plays against and strengthens the humor that infuses even his most serious poems. He emphasizes the line breaks (as too many poets fail to do) without disrupting the syntax. Hearing the author's own ideas of how these poems should sound helps us to understand his intentions, as well as Collins's (much underrated) use of imagery. Listeners may find themselves pausing between poems to give themselves a chance to think about each one before starting the next. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172103155
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/22/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged

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