Kennedy described the volume as containing “great verse, moving, intelligent and darkly funny.” Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001), the US version of Collins’s selected, had a tumultuous journey to print. Poet and critic Michael Donaghy called Collins a “rare amalgam of accessibility and intelligence,” and A.L. It selected work from his previous four books and was met with great acclaim in the UK. Taking off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes (2000) was the first Collins collection published outside the US. Discussing Picnic, Lightning (1998) and its predecessor, The Art of Drowning (1995), John Taylor noted that Collins’s skillful, smooth style and inventive subject matter “helps us feel the mystery of being alive.” Taylor added: “Rarely has anyone written poems that appear so transparent on the surface yet become so ambiguous, thought-provoking, or simply wise once the reader has peered into the depths.” Collins’s subsequent work has been regularly lauded for its ability to connect with readers. The collection was selected by poet Ed Hirsch for the 1990 National Poetry Series. Though Collins published throughout the 1980s, it was his fourth book, Questions about Angels (1991), that propelled him into the literary spotlight. The reading was in front of a joint session of Congress held outside of Washington, DC. In 2002, as US poet laureate, Collins was asked to write a poem commemorating the first anniversary of the fall of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on September 11. He served two terms as the US poet laureate, from 2001-2003, was New York State poet laureate from 2004-2006, and is a regular guest on National Public Radio programs. He is also Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute in Florida, and a faculty member at the State University of New York-Stonybrook.Ĭollins’s level of fame is almost unprecedented in the world of contemporary poetry: his readings regularly sell out, and he received a six-figure advance when he moved publishers in the late 1990s. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts and has taught at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence, and Lehman College, City University of New York, where he is a Distinguished Professor. In 1975 he cofounded the Mid-Atlantic Review with Michael Shannon. He earned a BA from the College of the Holy Cross, and both an MA and PhD from the University of California-Riverside. Collins was born in 1941 in New York City. Dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, Billy Collins is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor but often slip into quirky, tender, or profound observation on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself.
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