The most obvious thing to say about Collins's poetry is that it is funny, in an accessible and immediately familiar way. In fact, he writes out, in a large and babyish hand, one of the major poetic scripts of our time: the one that finds transcendence in the ordinary, and sings hymns to the banal. Though Collins often borrows the tones and the strategies of stand-up comedy, his poetry is not all jokes. He (or she) is welleducated and well-read, probably an English major, maybe even an M.F.A., who can recognize the surprisingly wide range of reference in Collins's poems: Wordsworth, Stevens, and Frost, Izaak Walton and Duns Scotus, Nick Adams and Emma Bovary. Yet the very existence of a 'popular poet' is reassuring for an art seemingly doomed to ivory-tower irrelevance.Ĭollins's verse makes clear, however, that his ideal reader is by no means the man on the street. The dust jacket of Sailing Alone Around the Room announces that Collins's 'last three collections of poems have broken sales records for poetry.' All of this man-bites-dog astonishment condescends to poetry, where such small sums count as fortunes. poet laureate.Collins can collect $2,000 for a single reading of his poetry and Random House has reportedly offered him a publishing contract of at least $100,000 for three books.His one-year post as laureate will net him a $35,000 salary, a Washington office at the Library of Congress and few duties except to give more readings.' Nor does Collins's new publisher hesitate to beat the drum. Laureate,' it began: 'Billy Collins, a popular poet who makes money at the job, is becoming the 11th U.S.

Under the headline 'Popular Poet Named U.S. The associated press report of Billy Collins's appointment as poet laureate in June was a document of startling philistinism.

Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins (Random House, 172 pp., $21.95)

Sailing alone around the room