Musical Tables: Poems

ISBN: 0399589805

Author: Collins, Billy

Condition: New

NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the former United States Poet Laureate and New York Times bestselling author of Aimless Love, a collection of more than 135 small poems, eleven of them new to this edition, and each a thought or observation compressed to its emotional essenceWhenever I pick up a new book of poems, I flip through the pages looking for small ones. Just as I might have trust in an abstract painter more if I knew he or she could draw a credible chicken, I have faith in poets who can go short.-Billy CollinsYou can spot a Billy Collins poem immediately. The amiable voice, the light touch, the sudden turn at the end. He "puts the fun back in profundity, says poet Alice Fulton. In his own words, his poems tend to begin in Kansas and end in Oz.Now Americas 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 limerick, the small poem pushes to an extreme poetrys famed power to condense emotional and conceptual meaning. Inspired by the small poetry of writers as diverse as William Carlos Williams, W.S. Merwin, Kay Ryan, and Charles Simic, and written with Collinss recognizable wit and wisdom, the poems of Musical Tables show one of our greatest poets channeling his unique voice into a new phase of his exceptional career.3:00 AMOnly my handis asleep,but its a start.