Questions about Angels: Poems

I gather that Billy Collins is known for being an accessible poet and this collection bears evidence to that claim. The pieces here pull out all the stops to draw a reader in: plain speaking, witticisms, silly imagery, whimsy, comfortable rhythm, brevity. I was reminded of Shel Silverstein, which may be a poor comparison.

Some pieces really did work for me, like when he tried to capture the sensation of reading at night, in the moments before drifting off to sleep:

All readers know this sinking feeling of falling
into the liquid of sleep and then rising again
to the call of a voice that you are holding in your hands,
"Reading Myself to Sleep"

Or when he mused on the feeling of forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed

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obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never
even heard of
Forgetfulness

If I didn't keep notes on the things that I have read and enjoyed, I too would lose the details and then the memories.

I suppose that these poems and other fit into what seem like overarching themes about death and the afterlife, perhaps also adjacent themes about remembering, forgetting, drifting off, and change. It's not really spiritual poetry, as one might guess with a title like this. I am catching parallel, secular portrayals of death as transformation, dissipation, as the moment "when we run out of footprints" ("Pensée") and afterlife in a more cosmic sense of becoming "little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere" ("The Afterlife"). Many poems are about movement and impermanence.

Not all of the poems spoke to me. Some just found too whimsical. But the ones that I liked really did leave me with things to think about.

P.S. Goodreads is not good with line breaks and indentation, so the appearance of the snippet from "Forgetfulness" is a little off. show less

Billy Collins is one of my favorite poets. This collection is varied... thoughtful, whimsical, sad, and fun.

A lot of his poetry is easy to read and relate to...
How many will recognize this feeling somewhere between waking and sleeping?
exerpt from "Reading Myself to Sleep":

"Is there a more gentle way o go into the night
than to follow an endless rope of sentences
and then to slip drowsily under the surface of a page

into the first tenative flicker of a dream,
passing out of the bright precincts of attention
like cigarette smoke passing through a window screen?

All late readers know this sinking feeling of falling
into the liquid of sleep and then rising again
to the call of a voice that you are holding in your hands

as if pulled from the show more sea back into a boat...."

Recommended show less

Poems you can see.

Happy National Poetry Month!

This is the book I 'won' at our Christmas white elephant book swap, and it's exactly what I needed. Reminded me that there's a ton of poetry waiting for me.