Water, Water
08 May 2025Synopsis
'Among the best poems that Collins has ever written' – NPR
In Water, Water Billy Collins writes with joy and wonder about the beauties and ironies of everyday life. The best poems, he believes, begin in clarity and end with a hint of the sublime: A cat learns to drink from a swimming pool. An astronaut recites Emily Dickinson in space. Here is a writer devotedly in love with the world around him, fascinated by its pleasures but generously sensitive of its pains.
Ever a laureate of the oblique, Collins is especially sensitive to disappearances and acts of concealment, sketching objects by the outlines their absence leaves: ‘Everything in this hard place’, reflects one voice in ‘Crying in Class’, ‘is designed to disappear.’ From grief’s soft echoes, to the atheist equally afraid of heaven and hell, Collins remains as keenly vigilant of the light as he does the shadows which dance at its edges.
‘A poet of plenitude, irony, and Augustan grace’ The New Yorker
'Witty, wry and tender when it hurts, Water, Water is a pleasure to read and easy to give' – The Washington Post
Details
08 May 2025
9781035068708Reviews
Collins is his own most eloquent critic. In a poem bearing the stripped down title of, "Your Poem," he suggests that one of the go-to emotions in his work is: "buoyant ease in the shadow of mortality". This whole collection is filled with poems that strike that rare attitude. And, some of them, like "Emily Dickinson in Space," are among the best poems that Collins has ever written.NPR
America's favourite poetWall Street Journal
Billy Collins’ medium is a rare amalgam of accessibility and intelligence. I’d follow this man’s mind anywhere. Expect to be surprisedMichael Donaghy
Billy Collins is one of my favourite poets in the worldCarol Ann Duffy
