The Rain In Portugal : Poems
By Billy Collins
To Be Published by Random House, October 4, 2016
Print: $26
Ebook: $13.99
If you're any kind of literature reader, you must have heard the name of the poet Billy Collins at some point, even if you've never read any of his work. I hadn't really avoided him per se, but I'm pretty anti-establishment so the fact that he is so famous and also served as poet laureate of the US to me were marks AGAINST him. So when Amazon offered early access to his newest book of poems, The Rain In Portugal, to be published October 4, 2016, I approached it with some reservation. This was my first time actually reading any of his poems. To make a long story short, I loved it!
I had really fallen away from modern poetry for the longest time, but last year I got a subscription to Poetry Magazine to get back into the groove of things. After a year of reading the mag, I got a little blaise thinking "ok, THIS is modern poetry" and was disappointed because I could count the number of poems in the issues I read on around 3 fingers. Reading Billy Collins for the first time, I realized that there is a lot more breadth in terms of style and subject than I previously thought existed in contemporary poems.
Collins writes about many things in this volume, including his cat, opera, Greece, a meditation room in his house, and lost children. At one point he even imagines William Shakespeare sharing a jetflight with him. It seems like no topic is too big or too trivial for Collins. I was impressed by his mastery and ability to bring power and art to whatever he was writing about.
Another thing that I liked about the poems was the poet's sense of humor. In "2128" he muses about he and his fellow poet, Donald Hall, reaching the age of 200 and wondering how they're still alive. Even when Collins writes about death, he thinks of it with irony and humor. "Helium" is a poem wondering about how the world will go on without us after we die. As he drives through a small Ohio town, Billy vows to "eat more fresh fruits and vegetables/ and to start going to the gym" in order to outlive a balloon design business he is passing by!
Really loved this book because it opened my eyes to the infinite variety of facets of the world you can write about in poetry. Also, the humor. I chuckled pretty frequently as I read the poems. At the same time, they also enlighten and widen your perceptions of the everyday.
I will definitely be acquiring more books by this author.
My Grade: A+
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