Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes: Selected Poems
by Billy Collins
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Picador's big poetry title for 2000. A funny and moving collection from one of America's bestselling poetsBilly Collins is one of America's best loved poets and comes armed with plaudits from John Updike, E Annie Proulx. He is one of Carol Ann Duffy's favourite living poets and this Selected is the first time he will be published in the UK. From a poem about the relentless barking of next door's dog-Another Reason Why I don't Keep a Gun in the House-to an elegy to The Best Cigarette. Just show more read one poem and you'll be a committed fan. Billy Collins gets right to the heart of things. He is one of the funniest poets writing today. Billy Collins is a fantastic performer (his readings at the Poetry festival in Aldeburgh were sold out, as were all his US collections) and will hopefully be brought over by the South Bank, London in the Autumn. His readings are unmissable. This collection should be The World's Wife of 2000r. show lessTags
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The clarity of his poems is not geometric - they are full of bits that stick out, strands that just peter out at the end, fits and starts and sudden distractions. It is a good simulation of what a thoughtful life really is like. And if he is jokier than most poets of this generation, that just makes him a more welcome guest among one's shelves, at least when one is in a humane sort of mood.
billy collins was probably one of my first introductions to poetry and how wonderful and rich the day to day experience of being alive can be. that said, this collection isn't as exciting as it might have been a few years ago. there's some pretty good pieces in here: winter syntax, morning, man in space, to name a few. but by and large, the subject matter kinda remains the same and so does the style. overall a pretty good experience but not exactly a life-changing read.
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Author Information
42+ Works 12,815 Members
Billy Collins has published six collections of poetry, including Questions About Angels and The Art of Drowning, Picnic, Lightning, his latest, sold more than 25,000 copies in its first year. He teaches at Lehman College of the City University of New York and at Sarah Lawrence College. He was named U.S. Poet Laureate in June 2000. (Bowker Author show more Biography) Billy Collins was born in New York City in 1941. He earned a BA from the College of the Holy Cross, and both an MA and PhD from the University of California-Riverside. Collins conducted summer poetry workshops at University College Galway and is the Poet in Residence at Burren College of Art in Ireland. He is also a professor of English at Lehman College (CUNY). In 1992, Collins was chosen to be the Literary Lion of the New York Public Library. He was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001 and held the title until 2003. Collins then served as Poet Laureate for the State of New York from 2004 until 2006. His poetry has appeared in anthologies, textbooks and periodicals including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The American scholar, Harper's, The Paris Review and The New Yorker. He is the author of six books of poetry including "The Art of Drowning." His poems have also been selected to appear in The Best American Poetry of 1992, 1993 and 1997. His works have won various awards including the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize, the Oscar Blumenthal Prize and the Levinson Prize, all awarded by Poetry. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His collection of poems entitled Aimless Love made numerous best-seller lists in 2013. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes: Selected Poems
- Original publication date
- 2000
- First words
- The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)This is the end, according to Aristotle,
what we have been waiting for,
what everything comes down to,
the destination we cannot help imagining,
a streak of light in the sky,
a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves. - Blurbers
- Updike, John; Donaghy, Michael; Proulx, E. Annie; Duffy, Carol Ann
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- Members
- 144
- Popularity
- 227,181
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.03)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 2
- ASINs
- 4
