About this title: Over the past decade, Billy Collins has emerged as the most beloved American poet since Robert Frost, garnering critical acclaim and broad popular appeal. To celebrate his years as U.S. Poet Laureate, we are pleased to announce these special, limited editions, in hardcover, of the book that helped establish and secure his reputation during the ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780822956709ISBN:0822956705
Description: Good. Text pages clean & tight with no markings or highlighting. Cover has scattered scratches & slight shelf wear along edges. Collection of poems from this award-winning poet. Very readable copy. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780822956709ISBN:0822956705
Description: VERY GOOD. Text pages are clean, UNMARKED and flat. Previous owner's name written in pen on inside front cover. Cover has teeny, tiny corner bumps and minimal scuffs; no tears. Uncreased, straight spine. 070408 (wham15) read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Date Published: 1998-01-29
ISBN-13:9780822956709ISBN:0822956705
Description: Very Good. Binding is tight and square. Some notes and marks on pages. Edge and corner wear. Careful packaging and fast shipping. We recommend PRIORITY MAIL for even faster delivery! read more
Description: Like New. Trade paperback. Like new; no internal markings; has lost its "Brand New" shine but no obvious defects. Poetry 92509. No remainder mark. In sealed plastic protection. 1998. Trade paperback. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780822956709ISBN:0822956705
Description: Near Fine. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Wraps; 103 Pages; Textblock is tight with no internal markings or names. Cover has the lightest of shelf wear with no tears or creasing to spine. A super book of poetry which is heartbreakingly beautiful. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780822956709ISBN:0822956705
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 104 p. Pitt Poetry (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780822940661ISBN:0822940663
Description: Good. Pittsburgh UP hc w/ dj. minor shelfwear on jacket. clean and unmarked pages. gently used. Thank you for browsing. A REAL Used Bookstore since 1991. No-hassle return policy if not completely satisfied. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780822956709ISBN:0822956705
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780822956709ISBN:0822956705
Description: Association Copy. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Inscribed by Author First edition, eighth print. Inscribed by Collins to Reed and Helen Wittemore on the title page. "To the Whittemore's Billy Collins. " Perfect-bound pictoral wraps. Slight trace of sticker residue on the rear wrap (not immediately apparent); otherwise, an unread copy in Fine condition. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780822956709ISBN:0822956705
Description: Good. A good reading copy in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dust cover, if available). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels. All items will be shipped by the close of the next business day. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780822956709ISBN:0822956705
Description: Good. Used Condition-GOOD can be a well cared for Book that is in great condition to a Book that may show some signs of wear. GOOD Books sometimes are permanently marked; have some spine or page creases; exibit signs of aging or an ExLibrary copy. ** Sometimes grease pencil or permanent marking on cover. May contain limited notes and or highlighting. 100% Satisfaction guaranteed on all purchases. ** SHIPS FROM USA-Domestic Delivery takes 5-14 days ** read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780822956709ISBN:0822956705
Description: Paperback. Not Pretty. Some Staining; Frayed Corners/Bent Cover. SKU: 23026573 All orders shipped within 1 business day. 14 day money back guarantee ISBN: 9780822956709 Not Pretty. Some Staining; Frayed Corners/Bent Cover. SKU: 23026573 All orders shipped within 1 business day. 14 day money back guarantee. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780822956709ISBN:0822956705
Description: FINE NEW. No Jacket. FINE NEW: Soft Cover. B59. Never used. Clean! University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998. Thousands of titles to choose from. Touchstone Books Ltd. is your source for the best prices and broadest selection. Standard shipments arrive 7-10 business days. Priority 3-6. Dependable and friendly service. Satisfaction guaranteed. We offer lower shipping rates for the second item. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780822956709ISBN:0822956705
Description: Fine. 0822956705. Like new. Never read. Clean, no markings. Pages are bright and white; spine is true, tight and straight. Lovely copy.; Pitt Poetry Series; 0.35 x 8.01 x 6.1 Inches; 104 pages. read more
1. Easy to recommend, especially to people who don't read a lot of poetry. I plan on giving my copy to my mom. It's easy to read, easy to follow, and easy to put down at night. No emotional bombs and no c-words (I'm looking at you, Carolyn Forche.)
2. Billy Collins writes the most thematically vanilla poetry imaginable, which is a huge part of his appeal: "Oh, this is a poem about eating breakfast? I eat breakfast! This is so great."
3. He's a really good writer, and some of these poems are really good.
& Reasons I didn't love this book:
1. Reasons #1 & 2 from above. I'm not one of those people with a snooty aversion to popular poets, but BC just takes accessibility and niceness to a level I find really boring. I read these poems in the middle of the night, at the point where my brain was already half asleep and I wasn't committing myself 100% to anything but breathing, and this book felt right at my level. That says something, I think...
2. The format is really sucky. For too many of the poems, a page break comes at a point where the last line on one page feels like a good conclusion, then you turn the page and surprise! There's another 3 stanzas to go. Distracting, and doesn't do much for the integrity of the poems.
3. There are some really good poems in this book, MAYBE one or two great ones... but the good stuff to filler ratio seems skewed to the negative. Much of this impression comes down to personal preference, but so it goes."
"i usually don't fall in love with poets this quickly. especially modern ones. Billy Collins is a recent poet laureate, and I simply love this collection of poems! Simple and wonderful."
"The poem 'I Go Back to the House for a Book' speaks so strongly to me, as I suspect it would for many readers. The idea is that by going back into the house to get the book that you split yourself into a couple of people, one of whom is always tagging behind the other (who didn't go back to get the book). If 'true', I'm a long queue by now...
Another poem in this collection that I love because it is local to Philadelphia is 'Fishing on the Susquehanna in July', although I guess a lot of people who enjoy the river could claim the poem as theirs, not just those of us who live near Philadelphia."
"I read this on the bus, admittedly not the best place to read poetry, but it still managed to make me smile and think. I read and really loved two of Collins' other collections, Nine Horses and Sailing Lone Around the Room, so was not at all surprised that I also liked this one.
What I like about Collins is that he seems so transparent and honest (probably a poetic illusion). He kind of seems like a puttery guy who spends a lot of time in his house. He writes poems about trying to write poems about exciting things like rafting or fishing when really he's still in his bathrobe. I also for some reason like the way the words look on the page--very airy and light.
Some of the poems in Picnic, Lightning seemed very familiar to me and I'm not sure if I read this collection before and just forgot or if some of the poems have appeared elsewhere. One of my favorites is a poem called "Marginalia," which I'm going to paste below because I like it so much.
Marginalia
Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - "Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like why wrote "Don't be a ninny" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.
Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of "Irony" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. "Absolutely," they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. "Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines.
And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written "Man vs. Nature" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward.
We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge.
Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird signing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves.
And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.
Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- "Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."
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